Ignorant

When someone uses a word like "ignorant" to insult someone else, they have most likely just unveiled their own "ignorance."  When did the term "ignorant" become a synonym for being arrogant, haughty, or to have a bad attitude?  Ignorant means a lack of knowledge or education.  I digress.

I was in a small car accident yesterday.  It was nothing, no damage to my car, or the other person's car, no personal physical damage.  But I was a mess.  I was sitting at the bottom of the hill behind our house, waiting to merge onto a bridege on-ramp. I don't think I was moving, maybe 3 mph.  Suddenly, my car was rear-ended- hard.  The other driver immediately got out, came running over, she was very nice. At first.  I was shaking, completely frazzled- all I could think was- oh my gosh I'm 9 months pregnant!  I mumbled something to that effect when she kept repeating- you're ok, the car's ok, everything's ok.  "well, I didnt know that!" she responded.  "yeah, but I do," I said. I proceeded to get her insurance information just in case, and she proceeded to tell me that I should have gone because the light for oncoming traffic had turned red so they were stopping. She was actually trying to argue that I hadn't merged fast enough!
"It doesn't really matter what color the light was, you stop your car if the one in front of you hasn't gone."  I replied.  Were we really arguing?  Over and over she kept saying- "you should have gone, you should have gone, blah blah blah."  Finally- "ma'am, you just slammed your car into the back of mine. Please stop arguing with me." well, apparently that was too much. The yelling started about how she was a good person and I didn't need to get "ignorant" with her (there's that word again), on and on. I turned, walked away, got back in my car, and pulled out.

Then I started to cry. I mean, really cry.  If you know me you know that I am not shaken by confrontation and have no problem defending myself.  It wasn't about her words, it was about the accident. This measly little non fender bender.  I was sobbing, tears running down my face, my chin, my neck.  When I got to my destination (a study break to Target believe it or not) I called Reg and could barely tell him the story I was crying so hard.  I was so worried about papoose.  I knew, with my cognitive mind, that she was fine. She was squirming as usual, the airbag hadn't deployed, I hadn't hit the steering wheel or anything.  But my emotional mind had a different interpretation- such a fast surge of fear followed by relief.  Is it motherhood? Hormones racing through me in these last 6 weeks of pregnancy? Both? I'm still surprised by my emotional response. I can only imagine how I would have reacted if the baby had been out of me and in her carseat.  I promise not to complain about the strength of her kicks or rolls today, I'm just really grateful that we are both ok.