I don't know how everyone else does it. Gets in their car, battles the horrific Dallas morning traffic, puts in the tedium of your average 9-to-5, gets back in their car, battles the worse Dallas afternoon traffic and somehow does it all without losing their godforsaken minds.
Because I sure as hell can't. I am the worst kind of road-rager. I completely lose it. I am that psychopath ranting and raving in the confines of her car, calling down the wrath of the heaven on anyone else who dares be on the road. I scream, I swear and I am absolutely positive that no one else has any reason whatsoever to be in my way at this very moment and if they don't clear the fuck out I hope they all die in a fiery pit filled with flesh-eating piranhas and angry frickin sea bass with frickin lasers on their frickin heads.
The biggest mystery is how I haven't popped a vessel by now. It's like I can feel my blood pressure tick higher and higher and higher with every moment I'm stuck in traffic. And I feel like I will do absolutely anything to get out of said traffic. The car that the state of Texas has for some unknown reason seen fit to license me to drive feels transformed into a 3000 pound battering ram. As cyclists we talk about cars as weapons—and if I drove anything larger than a Camry you better the hell believe that's how I'd use mine. I dream about being behind the wheel of a bulldozer and tossing aside everyone in my way, human cargo be damned.
I ride a bike with the idea that every driver is as bad as I am, because that can't possibly be true.
This post has been brought to you by the 5pm 9-car pileup that shut down eastbound 635 this afternoon. Also, by the letters R, A, G and E.
I guess we're simply different. Most of my commute stress involves the decision on which street to turn. Lately, I've been taking the last choice. Simply because I have.
ReplyDeleteYou need to get back on your bike. The weather is GLORIOUS!
I was SO that driver in my twenties. At some point though I took a really deep breath and started to teach myself to control my rage, probably around the hundredth time I arrived at work in the morning full of stress after yelling at the inside of a windshield pointlessly. I found, incidentally, that the worse off you are in traffic, the faster you can get out of it by being excessively polite and letting anyone go ahead of you who wants to. I have used this technique to get out of crowded chaotic concert parking lots many times. The be cool rule is now in effect.
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