Road Remorse

I am not a scoundrel.

Allow me to make that perfectly clear, because unfortunately, along with the rise of the world wide web, there has come a generation of tech-savvy tough guys who are all to eager to engage cross-continental conflict with total strangers as they sit half a world away typing from the safety of their living room. Yes, the minuscule, medium build man behind the words you are currently reading is definitely not the kind of guy whose buddies would describe him as "swole." Nor has a woman ever commented that she feels even remotely safe in the uneasy embrace of the toothpick sized protrusions that I call my arms.

From the start of 5th grade up until I graduated high school, I was a member of both the Cross Country and Track team and the only times I received detention was because I had either been caught chewing gum or had been late to school more than three times in one semester. In the 8th grade, I had a social studies class with one of my friends. While the teacher yammered on about the firing on Fort Sumter, my friend decided it was only appropriate to commemorate the event by wading up a piece of paper and lobbing it across the room like a cannonball and hitting me in the face. I couldn't believe how well he had timed his shot as my teacher had just turned around to write on the board another valuable life lesson that has stayed with me to this day, but escapes my memory at present. I was eager to hurl it back over. Unfortunately, my lack of attentiveness and athleticism caused me caused me to send the projectile parchment into the face of an innocent and easily angered adolescent sitting two rows away from my friend at the exact moment my teacher had chosen to turn around and make eye contact with the class in order to place emphasis on the importance of the export of cotton in the south. He looked at me and said "Do you want one after school detention or two lunch detentions? I couldn't believe my luck! Lunch detention meant that I wouldn't have to tell my parents about this middle school misdemeanor and I knew that any punishment handed down by the Pelham Memorial School faculty would amount to a paid vacation compared to what my parents were capable of. My parents never knew and have never known until that fateful day that there son decided to post about it on the internet.

As a boy, I once quenched my thirst for thievery by sneaking a candy bar in with the mix of groceries my mother had purchased and the one time in my life I offered to help carry bags out to the car was only so that I could intercept the chocolate contraband before the parental police caught on to what I was doing. You're probably thinking to yourself that I could rest my case there, as I have provided sufficient evidence to support my opening claim, but allow me to continue. At the age of nine, I attended my first professional hockey game in Boston. This particular on ice outing was chippy from start to finish and loaded with cheap shots and checks from behind that culminated in a third period bench clearing brawl. As the predominantly Canadian and Russian men did battle on the ice, the crowd roared and cheered. This all became too much for poor, little me as I sat teary-eyed in my seat wondering "Why can't we all just get along?" Do you feel as though you now have an elementary understanding of who you are dealing with? Good. Now we can begin.

New England. It's where I grew up. It's the place I call home. As a sports fan, I've seen my hometown team capture 1 NBA title, 1 Stanley Cup, 2 World Series championships and 4 Super Bowl rings. As a student, I've lived a Barry Bonds stones throw away from world-renowned institutions such as Harvard, MIT and Dartmouth. These establishments of academia have molded some of the most brilliant minds of today boasting alumni such as Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeremy Lin. Unfortunately, the prestige and prowess does not translate too well from the hallway to the highway as it oftentimes appears that these same people whose IQ's are off the charts are turned into absolute morons the second that they are placed behind the wheel.

While driving, people have to make thousands of split-second decisions. Unforeseen events can sometimes lead to split-second reactions as well. In the negative sense, this manifests itself as something referred to as road rage. When someone does something on the road that we don't like, we immediately visualize and verbalize a lot of assumptions and opinions about the offenders intellect, ethnicity and gender identity In times of anger such as this, I find that it's important that I ask myself, What Would Jesus Do? Given the self-centeredness of one particular country music superstar, in this instance, the answer to that question is that he would  chauffeur around Carrie Underwood, because she has placed Him and His arsenal of chariots as being solely responsible for keeping her on the road, but that's an issue for another episode.

A short time ago, I was driving down a two lane road and the driver next to me, much like an unhappy college student, decided that they did not like the direction that they were heading and in one insurance policy pounding trust fall with a car, they decided to swerve into my lane without so much as a signal or scream. I slammed on my brakes in order to accommodate their incompetence and I beeped at them. Moments later, I thought to myself "was that really necessary? Did I really have to beep? Did I really have to do that?" We were both fine and five seconds later, the sudden lane change really hadn't impacted my life in a major way. Unfortunately, my mind continued to wander. I thought "What if they had just had a tough day at work and didn't get that promotion they wanted? What if they had just received some bad news about the health of a family member or friend? What if issues in a relationship caused them to momentarily lose sight of what was going on around them?" When in all likelihood the reality is that maybe they are just an asshole. These thoughts followed me home long after the driver had made a turn and they had continued on their way and to tell you the truth, it was really kind of annoying. I've been beeped at before and did I get angry for a few seconds? Sure. However, being in the position of Beeper instead of Beepee sent me into this whole introspective mode of self-examination.  

In short, Road Rage involves several brief moments of fiery, yet seemingly righteous anger, while Road Remorse involves putting yourself through the Five Stages of Gravel Grief. So, although this has not panned out to be the heartwarming moral I had originally intended, my advice to you would be to get into as much trouble as you possibly can while you're young so that by the time you start driving and someone cuts you off in traffic you can do whatever you got to do to get it out of your system. It's a Dodge eat Dodge world out there and this approach is much more gratifying in its immediacy and proves to be exponentially less mentally and emotionally draining.