Can We All Be Nicer, Please?

I’m in a bad mood. I realize you don’t care -- you’re probably in a bad mood, too.

But because I’m normally about the perkiest guy you’d ever want to meet, I’ve been analyzing why the blues have struck. I’ve zeroed in on an incident Monday night outside Angel Stadium.

And this is where maybe we can all help each other.

I remember being perky in the minutes immediately after the game. It had moved at a snappy pace, the Angels had won, and my car that I’d parked on a side street wasn’t up on blocks when I got back to it after the game.

A few minutes later, I was eastbound on Katella Avenue, heading home and stopped at a light at the intersection with State College Boulevard. I was in the second lane from the curb, which gave me the option of going straight on Katella or turning right onto State College. When the light turned green, I turned right, only to find that the guy in the curb lane had swung wide on his turn and nearly hit me. To miss him, I swerved left toward a pickup in a long line waiting for the light on northbound State College.

Luckily, no metal touched. I avoided the wayward driver on my right and stopped short of the pickup. Any neutral observer would have stopped me and said, “Artful evasive driving, my man! Beautifully done!”

Instead, the driver in the pickup stuck his head out and yelled, “Learn to drive your car, (bleep)!”

For a moment, I wondered if I’d made an improper turn (a friend who lives in Anaheim returned to the scene the next day and confirmed I had not).

I should have been happy that I’d avoided an accident. Instead, the pickup driver’s epithet stuck with me. At first, I thought I was miffed only because he had unfairly assigned guilt to me. But when I didn’t get over it and that the bad vibe was tailing me all the way home, I realized there was something more to it.

It’s not like I’ve never been called names. Nor is it that I’ve never heard a bad word.

It’s this: Why are people so consistently crude and uncivil these days?

I realize I’m not breaking new ground with that question. Our lack of civility has been a subject of much chatter in recent years. As we all know, it is in evidence in virtually all walks of American life -- home, schools, Congress, the statehouse, athletic fields, freeways.

In short, just about anywhere that two or more people might congregate and see or hear something they don’t like.

Some of you are laughing now. You think I’m a sissy pants, don’t you?

Am not. All I want to know is, where did the pickup driver -- and countless others of us -- exchange the impulse to simply yell out, “Hey, watch it!” for the one that calls someone a derogatory name that I can’t even quote in a newspaper?

A couple days after that incident, I was listening to a conservative radio talk show host. He remarked, as he often has, that liberals “don’t think clearly.”

No bad words in that; he was content merely to be scornful with people with whom he disagrees. To extend his logic, the only clear thinkers in this country are conservatives.

I call that uncivil discourse. To me, he’s the guy in the pickup without the expletive deleted.

I hear your cries to me now -- “Inspire us. Lead us out of this social morass!”

I can’t. In the long ride home after the pickup incident, I wasn’t filled with civil thoughts.

But as the framers of the Constitution sought, I want us to form a more perfect Union. And now that I’ve had three days to think about it, here’s what I’d say to the pickup driver:

“Say, sport, I take exception to your name-calling. Besides being coarse, you misdirected your anger at me. Had you investigated the situation before resorting to such a crudity, you’d have discovered that only my quick reflexes saved your truck from getting hit. No need to thank me, and may you experience continuing good fortune in your future endeavors.”

Dana Parsons can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at [email protected]. An archive of his recent columns is at www.latimes.com/parsons.