Run Into All Day

You know what, if you’re driving on the turnpike and everybody is already doing 75 mph and you come screaming up behind a car and high-beaming and tailgating and that car doesn’t move so you come screaming up behind another car going 75 and that car doesn’t move either, maybe it’s not because the drivers you’re high-beaming and tailgating are incompetent or dumb. Maybe they’re not moving out of your way because you’re driving like an inconsiderate ass and those drivers figure an ass like you doesn’t deserve to pull ahead. Maybe they’re not moving because you’re tailgating and high-beaming and not in spite of it. Maybe people just don’t like a BMW behind them when they’re speeding in the right lane and then suddenly there’s a rapid-fire BLINK BLINK BLINK BLINK BLINK in the rear-view mirror despite the fact that there are many cars in line ahead and people are already going as fast as they can. Maybe you thought the prestige of your Bavarian hood ornament would cause the Red Sea to part in front of you but nobody’s biting. Do you perhaps see this pattern as you tear up the highway and nobody moves for you? Do you sense that as the cars ahead deny your primacy and you go dramatically tearing around them, turn signal still blinking right even as you jerk back to the left, that maybe people would have let you go if you’d been more polite? Oh, we’re sorry, is 75 too slow for you? Oh, I hope you make it despite the snail-like pace of the world around you! Maybe you should ask for a police escort. And you know what else, there’s an old saying: “If you run into an asshole in the morning, you just ran into an asshole. If you run into them all day, you’re the asshole.” Psst: They’re talking about you, although you may not be who you think you are in the story.