The image is a bumper sticker I created. I think could be the best-selling bumper sticker of all time. Like you, I’ve seen so many social media meme’s and posts urging us to be kind to others because we never know what anyone else is going through. That is so true. We don’t. We can’t guess. We can’t even imagine. Maybe it’s you? Of course it is, because aren’t we all?
The word “Beware”, well it's a warning.
It’s true. You can’t tell by looking at me . . . how I try all I can to help my divorced daughter and her very special needs daughter, whose father thinks that helping his child is “bailing my daughter out.” Then there are the two years, six months and $11,000 of legal fees paid since my sister’s death, because her deceased husband’s children (not hers) are contesting his Will. They think their father was a millionaire and they want the money. He wasn’t, and there is no end in sight. Then there are any number of other family issues, like how my daughter’s father (I divorced him) still sees his brother, who sexually abused our daughter in her childhood. I didn’t know it was happening, but I should have.
Then today, there are things like the red truck.
I see the lights in my rearview mirror. In the dark of night on this rural road, I catch them even at a mile or more behind me. It seems I pay more attention, in self-defense, to what’s in my rear-view mirror than ever. I can tell it’s a newer model vehicle, halogens. Ugh.
Until now, mine was the only car on this road. I see the one behind me is traveling at high speed, and I’m already a few miles over the speed limit. I cringe, anticipating what’s coming.
More quickly than expected, it’s right behind me. It’s a truck, a pickup truck I realize, because the height of those headlights align perfectly with my rearview mirror, defying the tilt of it. The glare bounces straight into my eyes. In my driver’s side mirror, the reflection feels like a 1000-watt floodlight. “Fuck,” I hear myself say, but I remain focused ahead, grateful I know the road’s contours by heart, because I can barely see in front of me.
Don’t these pickup truck fuckers know how obstructive their headlights are to the car in front of them? Of course, they do Tanya. Trucks and penises? Power play, I think, rooted in some deep, unexplored powerlessness. Smaller is almost always the easy target.
I’m not going fast enough. Speed limit. Double yellow line.
It’s so close to my bumper I can see it’s a red truck. I don’t know who is behind the wheel, but it’s Friday night and I would bet it’s a young male, likely he thinks he has God as his co-pilot. How does he know I don’t have a gun? How do I know if he does? Things that at one time never crossed my mind now do. This is life in our country now. Aggression and disrespect pass for courage. We lost something during Covid, I think because of what I call manipu-nation. It caused us to stay home, the roads emptied, even of police. Some took this as license for anything goes. We lost the rite to be right in our personal choices, fall in line or be the enemy. A new kind of distrust virus was spawned. Fear first trusts no one. Open aggression. You need only to get on the roads to experience it. Now it’s leave the mask, step on the gas.
There’s no place for me to pull over on this road to let him pass, or I would to get rid of him. If I brake, even slightly, he will be in my backseat. My anger escalates with his rudeness. He’s not giving up and there’s nothing I can do. No place to go – he doesn’t care. Relentless.
Finally, he decides to cross the double yellow line, as if that ever meant anything to him in the first place. Rules are for everyone else.
He screams past, flying ahead.
Impulsively, I flash my lights in reprimand, and as quickly regret it. I try once again to soothe my pounding heart and release my clenched teeth. He’s not worth it, I tell myself. My stress. It’s not worth the flashes of anger that are likely shortening my life.
Not so far up the road is a traffic light. Ha! I catch up to Red Truck Guy just as the light turns red. I laugh because he knows it is me behind him and that we’ve ended up in the same place at the same time anyway. I see, as suspected, a young male driver. Who wins?
The light turns green and he sits there, Mr. Red Truck doesn’t go, he stays. I remain alert and patient. What game are we playing now? It doesn’t take long to find out. Just as the light turns back to red, he squeals away, sticking it to me, he thinks, by making me sit through another red light.
Yeah, I am angry. Hell yeah! Not about the red light, but about all the driver bullshit on the road these days. It feels like people like him need to control anything, everything, and anyone, except themselves.
I resist giving in to becoming as awful as I think he is, yet I can’t help hoping he learns his lesson and maybe I will get to see him pulled over by police, or even see his truck wrapped around a tree further down the road.
The traffic light turns green. And yeah, I’m going through something. I’ve got my own stuff to work on.
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