(no subject)

It is apparently Blog Against Torture day, and I'm not just bringing that up because my parents are on their way here.

In the big picture, I am so incredibly disapppointed in my species and my country. I keep hoping we'll grow up and be better than we are, because I still believe we're capable of it, but lately it's been one step forward, one decade back. )-: There are so many things to be said about this, and so many people who are capable of saying it so much better than I.

In the little picture, it is so easy to be thoughtlessly cruel to the people around you, both those you know and those you don't. I don't know if it's the economy or the state of the world but people seem ruder each day, and that just perpetuates rudeness further down. Little stuff adds up, but that's a two-way street. So take time to pay attention to the strangers and friends and lovers in your life. Hold the door for people behind you, especially if they are carrying heavy things. Say thank you when someone holds the door for you. Leave decent tips. Don't drive like a dickhead; it's not a race and you don't get "points" for each car you manage to get in front of. Be just as diligent, if not more so, in passing on compliments as criticisms -- we all earn plenty of both, but rarely do we bother to acknowledge the positive in others. Hug your children and tell them you love them. Smile at people (but not in a creepy stalker way!) Stop hurting, hitting, killing each other -- there's no reason for any of that that's not fundamentally stupid. For fuck's sake, try to care about each other and show some empathy, okay? I care about you all and most of you are breaking my heart.

the funny road-rage story

Sort of on the same line of thought as my previous post, a number of years ago I had the privilege of being involved in a funny road-rage incident.

At the time I was working for a scary little startup that was an absolutely miserable place to work. (You know you're in a bad job when by the end of your first day you know your new boss's nickname for his penis.) This company being near Boston, the commute back and forth to this job was hellish as well, and I usually had a finite amount of time from when I left work until I had to be at daycare to pick up my daughter without getting fined a zillion dollars for every minute I was late. I had backroads I would take for most of the way, but several thousand other people also took these same roads. There was one particularly bad intersection where I had to make a right-hand turn onto a larger road, and traffic was always very backed up both on the main road itself and at the stop-sign as people attempted to get out into the mostly-stalled traffic, which led to a lot of frustrated, unhappy people not generally willing to give a break to anyone else.

As it happens, the day this incident took place I had someone else picking my daughter up for me so I was, for once, not really in any kind of hurry at all. (Not that I drove rudely when I was in a hurry either, mind you.) I waited my turn at the stop sign, and every three or four cars on the main road someone would grudgingly let someone out (or a car would just bully their way into traffic without caring if someone was going to let them go or not.) When I reached the stop sign myself, there happened to be a piece of crap rustbucket car on the main road approaching the intersection with two early-20-something guys in it with no shirts on smoking cigarettes . Determined not to let anyone out, the driver was staying literally about a half-inch off the bumper of the car in front of them as traffic crawled haltingly forward. This was fine; I felt no need to be in front of them anyway, and someone would let me out eventually.

However, as this car passed and was stopped directly before me, the guy in the passenger seat leaned out the car window and hocked this giant glob of spit out the window without looking and hit my car. So I honked at him and made a Rude Gesture, which they returned in duplicate.

The person behind these guys let me out, so I ended up directly behind them. The driver of the losermobile must have decided that I'd honked at him because he didn't let me out (which wasn't it at all -- his idiot friend spit on my car) and figured if I was in that much of a hurry he was going to make my life even more difficult. So as we slowly made our way down this road that was a major bottleneck of traffic, with cars trying to get in from all directions without benefit of traffic lights or anything else to help traffic flow, this guy stopped and let someone out in front of him at *every* *single* intersection, each time looking in his mirror back at me and grinning and then giving me the finger.

Meanwhile, in whatever car it was that had just been given a reprieve from a long wait and a fight for the chance to get out, you could see that driver's face lighten up with expressions of amazement and gratitude. In trying to piss me off, loserguy made more than a half-dozen other random people really happy -- and some of them then stopped and let people out too. You could feel this sort of strange goodwill spread slowly outward from these small acts of kindness born of an intent for assholery.

And I enjoyed every damned minute of it so much I didn't take my usual turn and stayed behind these guys several miles longer so they'd keep letting people out. I may not have gotten where I was going quickly but neither did they, and who knows how many other people benefitted as a result?