Parlay, some of us might think that if the car doesn't move, in gear, then revving it to four grand "waiting for something to happen" is a good way to utterly and completely fry the trans or go to grenade mode.

Simply revving it will, in racer-speak will cure the problem thus: either nothing's wrong, or it will utterly fail, leaving you stranded. Depending on your economic status, this may or may not be significant.

For me, if there's a "bad" noise, the logical thing to do is to pull over and have a look. It could be a lot of things varying from nothing to, say, you only ran over your neighbor's child. But for chrissake, stop and look first.