[SB] Sabbath Blessing

[Molly Wolf]

Tailgater

Light snow; not enough to make driving home a problem, but enough 
that I preferred old, quiet, gentle Route 2 to the four-lane bustle 
of the 401 (Ontario's superhighway). I'm a good winter driver, which 
means that I'm a cautious driver; I leave a little more space, turn a 
little more gently, drive a tad slower, use my stick shift instead of 
the brakes. I respect winter greatly. It's the only appropriate 
response, if you're driving.

Which meant that I suffered more than my usual annoyance when the 
black SUV tried to crawl up my tail pipe.

Dammit, if you're in a hurry, take the 401. Don't take Route 2; it's 
not a road for high-speed travel. It goes back more than a century 
and is lined with more-than-century-old lovely limestone houses and 
farms. It's also a serious road, so it behooves drivers not to 
dawdle. But it's not a road for speeding, either. Expect the speed 
limit, even if you'd rather drive a little faster.

The SUV was weaving back and forth in frustration. I was doing 
slightly more than the speed limit, but not enough more for the 
driver's satisfaction. I was respecting the snow, after all.

I remembered, and uttered, an expression from my early years in 
southern Vermont:

Go fry ice.

I have two legitimate responses to being tailgated. I tap the brakes 
for a microsecond, just to say "Back off, bud!" and if that doesn't 
work, I gently allow myself to slow to the speed limit, or maybe even 
a little below. If the tailgater is going to get his or her knickers 
twisted over the speed I'm going, the least I can do, in all 
courtesy, is to assist the knicker-twisting as best I can.

So I did that. The SUV went nuts.

I knew we were coming to a passing place, so I gently allowed myself 
to drop down to well under the speed limit, out of sheer bitchiness, 
and then the SUV roared past at high speed. All yours, bucky, I thought.

It has been mooted that car driving isolates people and allows them 
to behave badly. But in fact, we do community on the highways, big 
time. (This is not a defence for car driving, which is, let's face 
it, totally environmentally disgusting.) The positions we hold with 
other drivers, how we allow yields and exhibit courtesy and all that, 
are issues of living in community. The 401 going through Toronto, all 
dozen lanes of it, is a dance of connectedness -- or of willful 
disconnectedness. We drive selfishly or selflessly, but we drive in 
relationship with each other.

My tailgater's need for speed wasn't externally determined; 
otherwise, the driver could have taken the 401, which is really fast 
and easily accessible. I have no idea what propelled him or her. I 
only know that selfishness is dangerous stuff, not just for the 
victim, but for the perpetrator.

It's the last day of January, and we are very tired of winter. Now to 
brace our shoulders for February and March....



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A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in 
no other way. -- Mark Twain