Even white boys got to shout - Driver's Ed Edition

This is another writing exercise that took on a life of its own, once I started going. I'm currently trying to discipline myself to write everyday with the help of Skillshare.com's 10 Day Journal Challenge, taught by Emily Gould. This is day nine and it's been a ton of fun. Each daily exercise tasks you to start every entry with "Today I noticed."

Today I noticed that it may be impossible to critique a person’s driving without them becoming super defensive about it. Every single time, and I’m not exaggerating, I’ve ever made mention or motion of or to someone to correct a driving behavior, they come undone as if you’ve publicly brought up a secret they shared in confidence. It’s almost like you said something racist about their grandmother, by the way they flip their palms toward the heavens and shake their head with their mouth open. 

This reaction surely has a lifetime of baggage to unpack. Maybe it stems from their first driving experience, when their impatient dad gave up on them. “You know what, stop the car please and I’ll get us home.” Or maybe not. Maybe the consequences of a vehicular mistake are so great, that the person making the mistake is reacting to being accused of potentially murdering someone?

That makes sense the more I think on it. When you suggest someone be a safer driver, you’re really ONLY saying, “Hey, you’re going to kill someone if you don’t change how you do that.”  What reaction would you have if you were accused of involuntary manslaughter for something that a police officer would hand out a warning for? Maybe that’s it? Perhaps the accused feels that you’re overly exerting your station as a civilian? “Fuck you dude, you’re not a cop or my dad!”

The aggression levels between genders vary very little when it comes to this subject. The emotion goes straight to rabid across the board. Every single person doubles down. Once noticing the stranger is trying to correct them, the teeth and middle fingers always come out. The only difference in heightened aggression has to do with the driver’s socioeconomic scenario. 

Poor people are always more aggressive, because they have less to lose. This isn’t a judgement, I’m one of them. But the baseline reaction is at least a middle finger and maybe a mouthed, “Fuck you!” from behind the glass, no matter the person’s annual earnings. When it comes from a “poor” though, usually the window is already rolled down because of a broken air conditioner or the glass was shattered months ago, when their stereo was ripped off. That, or it’s just down so they can flick a cigarette. 

The poor person will not settle with the baseline, “Fuck you!” They will inevitably add, “Bitch!” or couple it with an insult like, “Fuck you, you stupid ass bitch!” And wherever you find a, “Fuck you, you stupid ass bitch!” you’ll also run into a threat of violence. It’ll be something like this: “Fuck you, you stupid ass bitch!” and then comes the challenge, “What?!? What the fuck are you gonna do?”” Again, the palms to the sky and possibly some brake lights to make you scared. They may even lean out the window for posterity. That’s when you whisper to yourself, “Please don’t stop, please don’t stop, pleeeease.” 

The only time I will ever meet any person’s aggression with any push back, is when I’m in the car with a child or in my case, children. I have four. I know, it’s a lot. This may sound dangerous and unwise because it is. I do not recommend putting yours and your children’s lives at risk because someone passed you on the right, even though you were already in the slow lane. But there’s just something about protective rage that causes me to roll the dice and see if I can bluff the aggressive asshole. Usually I won’t gesture or say anything. I’ll just pull up alongside them and stare. Nodding my head up and down as if to say, “If my kids weren’t here, I’d fuck you up.” Just for a moment I hope they believe I’m part of the Russian mafia. It doesn’t always work, but when it does...Wow! The power! It causes you fuck your partner a little better that night. “That’s right baby, your boy was a dangerous man today.” 

It has backfired on me once though. Don’t worry I didn’t lose a child to it. I had just walked them from my minivan to their school building, but on the way back to my minivan, a dude in a loud-muffelered lowered maroon-colored truck (the first indication that I should’ve shut the fuck up), sped over the clearly marked undulations and breezed past me. As he passed I half-yelled, “Slow down!” which he unfortunately did. Then he threw it into reverse. “Fuck!” I didn’t know what to do. Do I get into my maroon colored minivan? (The one thing we had in common). Maybe that’s why he stopped, to discuss our matching vehicles? No. Instead he pulled up about as close as you can get, catching me frozen between getting in and being out of my spacious, responsible van.. 

He was making enough eye contact for the both of us, so my eyes cycled across four or five different objects, none of them being his angry, stoic face. “What did you say?” I began to pick a piece of loose rubber from my door jam and overly focus on it, rolling it between my fingers like a booger at a stoplight. Even though I don’t know sign language, my hand then gestured as to recategorize the conversation under “simple diplomacy.” “I’m just saying...that...uh...maybe you could(?) slow down, maybe?” I reluctantly and barely said. 

“What the fuck are you going to do if I don’t?” he terrored at me. I just stood there tilting my head, opening and closing my hands and mouth like I was doing a silent Robert Deniro impression. In my mind I was fully expecting to fight a much braver man than myself. I wasn’t even sure I’d lose, which made this scenario even weirder. I’m 6’3” and was 230lbs of hammer-swing’n construction muscles, so I don’t know why I couldn’t channel my inner “What the fuck did I say? I said, fucking slow down, you stupid ass bitch.” Where was that Soviet widow-maker when I needed him? I wasn’t even sure how tall the guy was. His swagger measured him at least 12 feet tall.

But before I could whimper a word, the dude looked me up and down, put his lowered F-150 into gear and said, “Yeah, that’s what i thought,” and drove away. I couldn’t even look at his truck as it pulled away, out of fear that I’d see his eyes in the rearview or side mirrors. As he turned the corner and was out of eye-shot, I began to breathe again. I slid my open hands down my shirt to dry them, got back into my car, intently secured my seat belt and flipped on some NPR. I’d have to say it was a good day. By the way, this was like fifteen years ago. Don’t fuck with me now...please don’t.