Driving With Assholes

What I Learned on the Road

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m convinced that sometime during the COVID fiasco, either due to Zoom monitor radiation, or COVID-brain syndrome, all of America completely forgot how to drive.

Here’s my recent experience. Last Sunday morning, I got up and got dressed to go to church. Yep, I was the good, spiritual person while the rest of you laid around in bed or sat at the kitchen table in your underwear, sipping coffee and catching up on emails like this one. So, in the short four miles to church, here’s what good-person, me encountered:

Asshole Number Three (not even a driver): As always, on my way to church, I stopped by the local convenience store to check my lottery tickets, but before I could even pull in, some homeless guy is pushing a stolen grocery cart across the parking lot entrance at the speed of glaciers melting. Obviously, he had no job to go to so he was in no hurry but the rest of us were, so I gave him the slightest tap on the horn. He actually shot the finger at me and moseyed even slower!

Asshole Number Four: Unwilling to just mow the homeless guy down (after all, I was on my way to church), I waited with saintly patience. Meanwhile, on the other side of the street, some young hottie is out for a morning jog, wearing practically nothing, and while I’m trying to see what brand of jogging shoes she has on, I apparently stared one millisecond longer than it took poky, homeless dude to clear the driveway, because Asshole number four, behind me, lays on the horn. Jerk! Seriously, I’m on the road less than five minutes and already have to deal with all this.

Asshole Number Five: This one was serious and if I hadn’t been such a good and moral person, I’d have pulled out my gun and fired a warning shot. I‘m waiting, again with saintly patience, at the light just outside the convenience store, after having discovered that no, I did not win the lottery so I still have to go to work on Monday. Now everyone knows this light has a very short green cycle but the bozo in front of me is texting on their phone and never notices it turn green. It was like the brass section of the Boston Philharmonic tuning up! At least six different horns tapping out a cacophonic symphony. I played the tuba.

Asshole Number Six: Now, I’m no Spring Chicken but it occurs me that there really should be a point where the elderly turn the driving duties over to their kids. At the very last light before I reach the church parking lot, Methuselah is just ahead of me, driving the oldest, largest, and dirtiest Buick still on the planet. As we’re approaching the intersection, the light has been green for more than sixty seconds and I’m thinking we’re barely gonna make it. Then, the old fart SLOWS DOWN! The light isn’t even yellow yet. Sure enough, it goes yellow when he’s maybe two car lengths from the intersection but, going only ten miles an hour, he has time to stop. I can’t even adequately express my displeasure because someone in the other lane might be going to my church too and recognize me.

Asshole Number Two (man in blue): Now, this is where certain obsessive readers might lambast my failure to pay attention to detail and keep things in their correct order. Stay with me Shon. Two weeks ago, an over-zealous Garland motorcycle cop pulls me over and makes me even later to my meeting, just because I was doing a mere twelve miles over the speed limit. I mean, I was going down a steep hill for Pete’s sake! No mercy. I’m old! No mercy. I’m late for a meeting with Paul Mayer, an influential person in this community who probably has lunch with your boss! No mercy.

Asshole Number One: Yeah, I know. This is what you’ve been waiting for. So, I finally make it to church in one piece and the meddling preacher starts talking about logs in other people’s eyes and splinters in ours (or maybe the other way round) and he keeps going on about everybody being equally broken and in need of God’s grace, and how we shouldn’t judge. He even implies that I’m as broken as poky, homeless, grocery-cart-stealing finger-shooter, and I’m thinking, “Boy, this guy’s an asshole” No, wait. Scratch that. In reality, I realized who the asshole was (and still is) and I realized that I don’t want to be that person. So, the next time you cut me off in traffic and I make an obscene gesture at you, just remember, that’s not the real Guy Lawson. It’s just some asshole who looks like him.

Isn’t it amazing how we become PhD-level Psychologists and judge other people on the nuances of their character flaws while we manage to rationalize our own big issues? There has to be a better way. I’m not saying I’m going to instantly become a better person, but, in the future, I just might try to be a little more understanding about that log in your eye (or was it the other way round)?

She was wearing New Balance 840’s in case you’re still wondering

A meeting of great minds who think alike