Individual
Can I be honest? I’m sick and tired of these dilly-dallying, brake-happy, slow-down-and-enjoy-the-scenery drivers taking up the fast lane. Sick and tired! Can’t you see you’re holding all of us back? I mean, how many times do you gotta get honked at before you step on the gas? Look, I get it’s tempting to drive in the left lane with the big boys — I really do. There was a time when I, too, delighted in the thrill of doing 45 an hour on an open road. But you gotta understand, that’s exit-lane behavior, man, so either stop doing that goo-goo-ga-ga baby shit or pack up your diapers and go home.
Just last week I was rushing my pregnant wife to the hospital, and she was already contracting like crazy, man. I think I must’ve been going around 100 in a 60 zone — if I’m fully honest, not just for the sake of my wife, but because a smaller emergency was also going on in my bowels, and I could feel it getting into position to make like my firstborn and crown. But then here comes this student driver lookin’, baby-on-board sticker totin’, no sense-of-urgency havin’ slowpoke I almost ran into because he figured he was entitled to going at the speed of escargot in the fast lane. Hell, it was the first time someone brake-checked me without braking.
I’m not particularly proud of the things I said in the moment about that car or its affiliated driver, but I stand by every single word. My wife had to plug her ears at one point, out of fear that the filth spewing out from my mouth might cross the placenta, had she received it. Shamefully, I admit it was the most abhorrent, vile string of foul language I ever did produce in my 35 years on God’s green Earth, and the kind of thing old Gran-mamma (rest in peace, Gammy-goo) would’ve soaped my mouth for — even my dashboard Jesus figurine looked disappointed, his head drooping a little further down than usual.
Looking back, perhaps I was projecting a tad. Deep down, I knew the reason I was so angry wasn’t because I was trying to get my wife to the hospital or defuse the other emergency situation, but because I was jealous. I was jealous of the driver ahead of me and their carefree, pass- me-on-the-right attitude that stood against the harsh, un- spoken laws of the I-5. Once in a while, I want to know what it’s like to stop and smell the roses, and learn what makes me happy besides tailgating Honda Accords with bumper stickers that disagree with my worldview. But I didn’t have much time to think about it then, because the car I’d been cursing and screaming obscenities at turned on its sirens and pulled me over.
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