I'm Drivin' Here!

by Cathy



Even if you've never seen Midnight Cowboy, you have undoubtedly caught this scene somewhere:

It is said that this famous scene was improvised by Dustin Hoffman; that cab wasn't supposed to be on set and the reaction of the driver and the people in the background say it all.

When I first saw this, I laughed my arse off and I still do to this day. However, it's not so funny if you are the unassuming driver, or gasp! even a driver who really does have the right of way. Yeah, yeah, yeah, pedestrians always have the right of way and use that as their silver bullet, but sometimes, ya kinda just want to run them over.

First off, that pounding Hoffman gave on the hood of that cab? Absolutely unacceptable. You touch my car, I WILL run you over. I am sitting behind the wheel of a very powerful machine, okay?? I once had a bicyclist slam on the top of my car as he was riding by because I was double-parked a few inches into the bicycle lane. To top it off, he screamed some obscenity through my window, right to my bewildered face, as my baby slept in the back seat. And because of that? He's lucky I didn't go after him and force him into some parked cars.

Which brings me to another point, dear road-raged pedestrian/cyclist: before you haul up and start spewing sewage from your mouth into my open car window while behaving like a tantrum-throwing child, show some shred of respect and check to see that there are no kids in the car! I can't tell you how many times this has happened to me, and I, getting caught up in the moment, reciprocate the same ugly behavior back, forgetting for those few enraged seconds, that my kids are observing, listening, watching and well, taking life lessons from me, these of which I never intend to have them learn.

Everyone talks about Road Rage but why are they so tight-lipped about Pedestrian Rage? Haven't they noticed that in the last several years, not to be outshined by Road Ragers, pedestrians began waging a silent war by banding together in a seemingly underground fashion to wreak antagonistic havoc on all drivers? Have you noticed that if you stop an inch too far into the crossing lane while they are walking, or start accelerating as they just finish passing your car, you get a glaring sideways look of death from them? And God forbid you don't happen to see them because, wouldn't you know, they happen to be the line of one of several of your blind spots; that takes them to Defcon 6.

What could possibly set them on such a constant edge? Obviously they are pissed off that I am driving and they have to walk. And as walkers with their walking rights, even tree limbs should bend and bow to them as they walk past, right? They need to get over themselves.

I once read somewhere that a driver has around 200 possible distractions to contend with while driving, including inclement weather, street conditions, construction, potholes, traffic, directions, other drivers, what's going on inside the car (babies, conversations, fighting children), stop signs, speed limits, jaywalkers. bicyclists, traffic signals, animals, thinking about their next stop, cell phones, radio, eating, other traffic violators, car trouble, blind spots and on and on.


Therefore, dear pedestrians, we drivers don't intend to or purposefully want to run your ass over. That's not what we set out to do when we get behind the wheel. We just want to get from point A to point B and all the midpoints in between, move on with our day and deal with life's stresses as we're doing it. But you obviously think that that is EXACTLY what we want to do.

And you know, what? Push us in the wrong direction, and we just might. Why? 'Cause we're drivin' heah! We're drivin'!

Excommunicated

by Cathy

Some people are just not cut out to have personal, one-on-one conversations. They might do better in larger social groups where they can 'hide' within the conversations of others, reiterate a point someone else has brought up, can be more reserved in expressing their viewpoints, or even get on their soapbox as they now have a wider audience. However, when they are left to their own, conversational devices, they just cannot master the basic survival skill of relevant, two-way communication.

For your convenience, I've taken the liberty to categorize some of these ill-communicators as follows:


The Ummm...Pauser: Get it out already, wouldja? Every sentence starts and ends with an annoying "Ummm" and then that's followed by a Long. Ass. Pause. Just exhausting to converse with this one.

The Do-Di-Do-er: This one feels the need to sing a little ditty when there is a pause in conversation, usually arising when they are asked a question and are thinking of/searching for the answer. "Do di do, hmmm, let's see...do do do..." Must we fill every void and silence?

The Brick Waller: Another exhausting one; have you ever had a one-sided conversation with someone where you are the only one talking? And they just sit there? Like you're talking to a...well...you know. If you get a "Uh-huh" or a "Right" or "Yeah" out of them, you've had a conversation!

The I Love to Hear Myself Talker: This one is the exact opposite of the Brick Waller, to the point where you cannot find a gap to start a sentence and when you do, it gets smothered up by more of their babbling. You can't shut them up to save your life so you have to feign an emergency to stop the conversation.

The I Know Everything About Everythinger: You can only take them so much because you know, at some point, they are pulling shit out of their ass to prove the fake fact that they are know-it-allers. "Oh, the long-term impact of global warming? I got a friend who's tight with Al Gore, and he said..."

As I am writing this post and as fate would have it, my husband texts me to tell me he ran into so-and-so at a coffee shop and how he just won't. stop. talking. This I Love to Hear Myself Talker has been our neighbor for 15 years so out of sheer politics,  Joe is making the effort to be polite...while texting me about how he's going bananas.

This reminded me of a time when Joe and I were on a sailboat in Los Angeles with some of his friends and their work friends. The whole trip took about four hours  as we sailed to and from Catalina Island. Getting there was great, but by our return journey, having already spent a few hours on the bobbing boat and now, with the angry movement of the current churning our stomachs, we were all trying to keep our lunch down by gazing out towards the horizon to level ourselves.

Meanwhile, this is when another passenger, Tennessee Tuxedo (the nickname we gave him because he looked like the cartoon character and wouldn't you know it, he was from Tennessee) decides he wants to chat us up. Apparently, the feeling of nausea and seasickness gets his lips flapping. There we were, Joe and I half-hunched over the railing, eyes pinned to the horizon, begging for this boat to sail faster to dry land while Tennessee Tuxedo is talking about acting (surprise), his past experience, the industry, and asking us questions about our profession. Then he pops open a beer and asks us if we would like one. 'Do we look like we want to drink a beer right now?' I remember thinking while contemplating flipping his Southern ass overboard.

Conversing with people like these just makes me want to, well, excommunicate them. They just don't GET it. So I see my choices in conversing with them as follows:

-Politely exchange email addresses and cease and avoid all facetime communication
-Politely nod, smile, and/or keep conversation down to a minimum
 or
-Politely throw them overboard.

Some things are much easier said than done.