Entitled Man Strikes Again When I Least Expect It
And I’m reminded that gendered class privilege is still being churned out through society’s institutions
‘You don’t own the road Mr Newington’, I said, determined to have the last word before I wound down my car window.
I’d just watched open-mouthed as he almost backed into my car. I was awash with a tidal wave of nervous energy that needed somewhere to go.
For a few seconds the only thing I could do was blast the car horn in the hope that it would alert him to the adjacence of the car he had inexplicably failed to register.
His name wasn’t Mr Newington, as far as I knew. But it was the name on the left breast of his polo shirt, unmistakable under the insignia of Newington College, the elite private boys’ school just streets away.
It told me all I needed to know. About why he thought nothing of momentarily terrorising another road user. Why he thought it was okay to park in the driveway I had wrongly assumed would give me a buffer to get out.
We weren’t dealing with a situation of desperation or innocent advertence or even garden-variety carelessness. No, this was just a brazen exercise of entitlement.
