Road Rage 2

Posted on April 20, 2003 in Evolution & Creation The Orange

Easter traffic hardly allowed anyone to make any kind of offensive maneuver, but I still kept my eyes to the road and avoided looking at other drivers.

The driving instructor threw out all kinds of wishy washy psychiatric theories about why people lose it on the road. All the usual mystery phrases alluding to “territoriality” and “extension of self” popped out of his mouth. As I drove the canyon between Orange County and San Bernardino, I clutched the steering wheel. It seemed strange, I was both restricted to my skin and I was the truck, pushing my existence into a grid about six feet wide and ten feet long. Though senseless and unconnected to my brain, I worried about the slightest touch of another to it.

“In my opinion,” I rebutted the instructor’s vagueness, “I think that we just don’t think that the other cars have people inside, that we scream first at these rolling boxes, then find ourselves facing enraged people like ourselves and going even crazier than before — with words and gestures — just to save face. We’re still up to our knees in the savanna grasses and we just haven’t evolved to the point where we realize what is really going on here.”

The instructor gave me a blank, “thank you for sharing” look. As I sat back, I muttered to my seat mates “Well, there I’ve gone and upset all the Fundamentalists.”

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Odd thought: though I visualize the truck as an extension to myself, any passengers inside are not brought inside my head. They remain, paradoxically, removed and within my redefined self.