I am good. In fact, I am nice, I am kind and I am thoughtful to others. You could go so far as to say that I am just one big ball of wonderful, a ray of sunshine that heats a solar cell that provides crucial electricity to needy orphans and the abandoned penguins they just rescued. Yes siree, I am nothing short of a beautiful, splendid, awesome human being twenty-four hours a day, seven days per week and three hundred and sixty five days per year. Except, of course, when I’m driving.
I am good. In fact, I am nice, I am kind and I am thoughtful to others. You could go so far as to say that I am just one big ball of wonderful, a ray of sunshine that heats a solar cell that provides crucial electricity to needy orphans and the abandoned penguins they just rescued. Yes siree, I am nothing short of a beautiful, splendid, awesome human being twenty-four hours a day, seven days per week and three hundred and sixty five days per year. Except, of course, when I’m driving.
Something goes terribly wrong when I get behind the wheel of a car. Like Bill Bixby, I find myself suddenly transforming into Lou Ferrigno without a moment’s notice. This includes turning green and ripping my shirt. It’s a transformation that I can’t even begin to comprehend. There is something about driving in traffic that I find inherently infuriating. I am sure that the expression ‘driven to an early grave’ is more than a mere turn of phrase and accurately depicts the toll that the everyday commute can take.
It’s no good being judgmental in this life. People should be largely free to live as they wish. But as admirable a philosophy as this is, I abandon it the moment I turn the ignition. As soon as I’m on the road, I am constantly evaluating other drivers. This begins with an assessment of their driving technique and quickly devolves into the most brutal of character assessments. Changing lanes without indicating becomes so much more than a mere oversight or miscalculation but character flaw of such awesome dimensions that it defines the other driver entirely. In my mind there is no doubt that a person who fails to indicate suffers the kind of moral turpitude that causes them to flat-out refuse to sort the rubbish from the recyclables and wear socks made from baby seal fur whilst dining on endangered monkey meat using rhino horn for a spoon.
That said, I realize that this could be something of an over-reaction on my part.
Traffic is, perhaps, the quickest reminder that not everyone thinks the way you do. That others routinely defy your expectations as they merge, break the speed limit or zip in and out of lanes tells you we are not all alike. In theory I believe that we are all individuals, entitled to freedom of thought, feeling and allegiance but, that said, if everyone else could simply see it my way when driving, it would be greatly appreciated.
Sadly, I don’t always keep my thoughts to myself. From time to time, language borrowed from gangsta rap’s finest has passed my lips, requiring me to not so much wash my mouth out as eat an entire bar of soap upon returning home. There has even been the occasional song composed on the spot that, given the contents, is best left forgotten. Suffice to say, the lyrics and melody of ‘The Brown Camira’ are not something I plan to share with anyone soon. Then, perhaps most shamefully of all, there have been hand gestures. Lots of them.
There is, so I am told, a video game called ‘Angry Birds’. Sadly, for me this term is not a reference to a time-wasting phone app as it is a description of my entire driving career. Other drivers could not be blamed for thinking I only had one finger, such is my propensity for whipping out a single digit. It’s as though I am suffering some form of Tourette’s Syndrome that has taken hold of my middle finger. I can console myself with the fact that such appalling conduct only occurs when I am driving and at no other time. But despite my propensity for bad language, rude hand gestures and musical improvisation, I am a reluctant user of the car horn.
It was Shakespeare who famously once said, ‘To beep or not to beep: that is the question. Whether it is nobler in the minds of men to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous lane changes and by opposing end them. To sleep, to drive, no more.’ For a guy that drove a Ford Focus, Shakespeare sure had a way with words. There’s an art to using a car horn. There’s the light touch I refer to as a ‘bip’. Generally speaking, it’s used as part of a farewell or to wake a fellow driver at a set of traffic lights. Something less than a full beep, in this age of distraction it has become increasingly necessary to deploy the bip. In contrast, the long horn is a tool of anger. The longer the honk, the more infuriated the person sounding it has become.
There is a sense, sometimes, that the entire driving experience has become less collegiate and more like an episode of Gladiators. By that, I don’t mean extremely difficult to watch but simply more confrontational. Nowadays I find myself reluctant to deploy so much as a wake-up bip, even when the green light is staring me right in the face. It’s the fear of being misunderstood. That, for some, any horn may be regarded as a horn too far. Once, people gladly displayed bumper stickers that invited others to ‘Honk if you love Danish Blue Cheese’ or whatever and people would gladly join in. Not now. Beware the horns of war. Beep beep.