Or one lost job and impending cascade into poverty, perhaps after a long climb and struggle to escape that poverty.

Getting one’s car repossessed can easily be the a trigger for the total collapse of a person’s life.

Obviously his reaction is maladaptive. He’s fucked, and his hot head has made it far worse for himself.

But having one’s car towed is not like getting a wedgie or stubbing one’s toe. A person getting their car towed is most likely:

• Unable to make the payments required to keep it
• Behind on other payments too, like rent
• Utterly bereft of any cash buffer (else they would have paid the thing)
• Relying on that car to get to work and hence keep their job
• Living paycheck to paycheck, hence unable to survive even if he gets a new job immediately (it can take four weeks sometimes for the first paycheck at a new job to come in)
• Suffering from the cumulative effects of months, years, or even decades of financial anxiety

Not defending his behavior, but please don’t treat this like someone went on a rampage after stubbing their toe. People are trying so hard to survive right now.

If my car got towed right now, I’d end up on the street. I have better self control than this guy (learned in high school that violence is not tolerated at all by civilized society, so I learned to control it).

I myself have meltdowns, but they remain verbal. I’m definitely not proud at all to report that I lose control of my voice sometimes. I hate it when it’s happening and can’t stop it. But I’m not physically violent. The last time I expressed anger with my hands was when I slapped a countertop in 2009.

People think I’m on top of the world because I drive a brand new car. But that car is a rental.

That’s not some deep point. I guess I’m just saying that just because a person’s groomed and driving a shiny car doesn’t mean they aren’t an inch above absolute financial ruin.

I’m just trying to say don’t make too many assumptions.

For some people getting their vehicle towed means taking an uber to a tow lot, swiping their credit card for a few hundred bucks, and then skipping a few visits to the bar with friends. For others, it means the economic ladder they’ve been climbing with arms shuddering from exhaustion for the last five years, as they rise inch by sweat-soaked inch out of the alligator pit that is homelessness, is disappearing from under them, and that they’re going to be living on the street again.

The world is absolutely brutal at the bottom, and sometimes people’s rage is an expression of fear because they’ve been there and they don’t want to go back, and the yawning asshole checking boxes on his paperwork gets to go home and watch American Idol while the paperwork he filed sends you into the gauntlet of terror.