Dreadful day on Wednesday which I keep thinking over. Sorry but I'm writing this out of my system hopefully. Very long.
I was heading back to my car with my groceries and had loaded up and was getting in to my car when the couple in the next car arrived. I was parked quite close to their car (passenger sides both) and so the woman ended up standing right at the front of their car waiting to get in. I backed up slowly, aware of her, how close their car was, that I had another big car on the other side I couldn't see past, moving but very cautiously.
Suddenly there was a woman walking close to the back of my car so I slammed on the brakes and gave my horn a beep as if to say "Hey! Careful!!". First mistake.
She scooted around my car, inserted her head in my passenger window (warm day so windows were open) and started shrieking at me that I had tried to hit her. I said something like "you surprised me, I couldn't see you easily" and she continued to shriek about me being stupid for not using my review mirrors. And I said something dumb like "don't be an idiot!" Second mistake.
So still with her head in the window she wound up and smacked my wing mirror and shouted "look!! now you've hit me! you've hit me with your car!" And so I didn't respond with much dignity and said "oh f off, you're an idiot!" Third mistake.
She then starts shouting to the gathering crowd that I tried to back over her and that I've now hit her again with my car. She's going to call the police, she's going to collect evidence. And I respond with a polite "Oh for f sake, why don't you just f off, idiot!" or words to that effect. Losing count of the number of mistakes I made.
She then has walked off a ways so she can start taking pictures of my plate, my car, me. And as I have room now to finish reversing and start going forward so I can leave the parking lot. Unfortunately that means driving towards her. She walks away again and then suddenly turns and lunges towards the car as if to make it look like I was trying to drive in to her. I replied with a surprisingly modest "oh lady, just get out of my way".
At this point she runs around to my side of the car and reaches toward the window. I thought she was going to grab me but I think in fact she may have been trying to take my picture. She's still shouting, I'm shouting back and quite frankly she's so aggressive it's really scary. At this point some bloke that had been getting in his car about 30 feet away runs up and shouts in the passenger window " You're disgusting, really disgusting!". I was very scared and upset but the way is clear so I drive out of the parking lot leaving them all there. It was after this point that I discover that she had hit my side mirror so hard it had been closed, like you do when parking.
Now to be clear - I never hit her. Maybe she felt intimidated when I was driving towards her, that wasn't my intention it was simply to try to get away from her as that was the only way out. I have been the victim of road rage in the past where someone took offence at me being in front of them on the road and when we stopped at some lights jumped out of her car and opened my door and tried to drag me out. Maybe I was reliving that in some sense, I don't know.
I'm not proud of my reactions but hers were way over the top aggressive in my opinion. Not expecting much sympathy but just didn't think of a better way to deal with things at the time. I guess I should have just closed my windows and turned off the engine and wait for her to leave but I didn't think of that at the time.