I was on my way to the hospital this morning to sit in the waiting room for six or eight hours while a family member was having surgery when I realized I had no gas. Running out of gas while you are taking someone to or (worse) home from the hospital is not good. I stopped at the gas station to fill up.
While doing so, I realized I didn't have any cash, which is also not a good thing when you are headed into the uncertain world of hospitals (not to mention hospital parking lots). So I headed to the ATM, got some cash, looked at my watch and jumped into the car so I wouldn't be late.
Unfortunately, for the first time in 40 years of driving, I forgot to take the gas pump out, meaning I drove away with it, pulling the cord right out, along with my gas cap. I stopped. The gas station attendant came out. I told him it was my fault, that I was headed to the hospital and would pay for the damage to his pump. He could not have been nicer, more sympathetic, more understanding. We got through the paperwork in just a few minutes, and he kindly wished me luck with the rest of my day.
Not so the woman who was waiting to get gas at the now broken pump. She wouldn't stop honking her horn and screaming at me (and ultimately the attendant). Dressed in her finest exercise wear, facing about a three-minute wait until one of the other cars pulled off, she exploded. How dare I make her late for her exercise class? She didn't let up until I told her the pump was broken.
When I was 16 years old, I drove my father's car into the planter that was next to our driveway. When I got the courage to tell him, he said to me what his father had said to him the first time he banged up my grandfather's car: "it's only metal." It is.
A few years ago, a woman rear-ended me. Rear-enders are, we all know, always the other person's fault. The woman got out of the car; we asked each other if we were all right; she apologized. I told her not to worry about it, and she gave me her parents' number, saying that would be the best way to get in touch once I had an estimate.
When I called a week or so later, her mother told me she had died. She was dying when she hit me. Her mother thanked me for having been gracious and kind to her daughter at a time when she was distracted and terrified. I told her mother it was her daughter who had been gracious and kind, that the cars were just metal, that I was so sorry for her loss, and that there was, in fact, no damage to pay for.
I thought of that brave and decent woman as the woman in gym clothes screamed at me this morning. What was so important that she would scream at a person who, as it turned out, was on her way to the hospital — the same hospital where, almost a year to the day, I lost my beloved friend Kath? Didn't she understand that you never know, that a car is just a car, that five minutes is not a lifetime, not a delay you scream about?
She did not.
We live in an age where rudeness and cruelty are staples of online conversation, staples that have slipped into everyday life, staples that allow people who should know better to scream at others on the road, at the gas station and almost everywhere else, taking no responsibility for the impact of their words, not even stopping to wonder what it might be like to walk in the other person's shoes.
Road rage? Did someone die? Has someone been hurt? Have we really been reduced to the point that we forget that traffic ultimately moves, the pumps will be free in a few minutes and cars are just cars?
I'll pay for the pump. I need a new gas cap. It's only metal.
To find out more about Susan Estrich and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2011 CREATORS.COM
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7 Comments | Post Comment
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Another puff piece from Estrich, but more can be take from it than 'slow down". It seems that not only should suffrage be ended for college educated women, who in previously voting for Obama and in being likely to do so again abuse the privilege by emoting rather than reasoning and or who use the right to vote as a fashion accessory and or to ape brainlless elites or the cretins from the View, but the car keys should be removed as well.
Comment: #1
Posted by: joseph wright
Sat Jun 11, 2011 6:53 AM
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Joseph. you are seriously in need of an attitude adjustment, maybe a long term stay at the nearest mental hospital. What else could lead you to make such an evil response to a really mellow good-hearted essay?
Comment: #2
Posted by: Jan Miller
Sat Jun 11, 2011 10:13 AM
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So you drove off with the gas pump nozzle still sticking in your gas tank, ripping it out of the pump. Well, I would like to call you dumb, but if I did, I would have to call myself real dump. Actually, such events are typically a sign of a person having too much on their mind and not dealing adequately with the task at hand.
My top 3 Dumb and Dumber Moments
3. Driving: I had an RV and drove off one time with the external power still connected. Fortunately I have learned to plan for failure and I had rigged a power cord to “disconnect” with little damage. But there was still damage and there would have been much more but for the planning for stupidity.
2. Walking: While in college I lived off campus in an apartment that had an upstairs and a down stairs and the down stairs floor was covered in tile. One day I am upstairs studying for a final exam and I am cutting it close to being late to my test. I jump up, stick my books in a book bag, run down the steps, hit the tile running and my feet go flying in the air and I find myself on my back staring at the ceiling. Ouch. The back of my clothes are now soaked as a water pipe had sprung a leak and the floor was covered with water. I turn off the water and run back upstairs and change clothes all the time going through the possible example questions and answers. I run back down stairs and hit the tile running and I find myself looking up at the ceiling again with the back of my clothes getting soaked. Ouch again. Damn you are stupid, was my first thought. I jump up and go back upstairs and change my clothes again. This time I remember to step on the tile with care and make it out the door.
1. Locking keys in car: When in college, I drove to campus. At this time I lived 30 minutes away by car. On three occasions I locked my keys in my car as I was thinking about all the work I had to do instead of where my keys were when getting out of my car. These 3 events were very inconvenient as I had to get a friend to drive me home to get my keys (gas was cheaper than a locksmith). The hour plus delay was also annoying and painful. I finally had to develop a process for getting out of my car where I ALWAYS used the keys to lock my door. Even when I could see the keys in my hand, I would use the keys to lock the door so that it became a habit. Thus, when I was not thinking, out of habit I would look for my keys to lock the door. Such worked very well, except for one occasion. I had a hatch back and I would put my book bag in the hatch. One day, for some reason, I set the keys down in the hatch to look for something and then closed the hatch locking my keys in the hatch. Damn you are stupid, I thought . . . time to tweak the process for getting out of my car.
Yes. Slow down and focus on the activity at hand.
Oh, by the way, it is my experience that people rarely yell in response to the first annoying event, it normally takes a chain of annoying stimuli to get a yell. Thus, this woman was not irritated at you alone; she was irritated at you and several events before you.
That said, somehow I find it easy to believe that your actions are often the “straw that broke the camel's back” when it comes to annoying events.
Comment: #3
Posted by: SusansMirror
Mon Jun 13, 2011 9:09 AM
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I had a very similar moment three years ago. I was returning from a routine Doctors appointment that had gone horribly awry. At 24 weeks pregnant, it was discovered that a slow, undetected leak had caused the loss of all of the amniotic fluid. My baby was alive, but immediate hospitalization was the imperative. Driving home, shaking and in shock, I was trying to figure out how to deliver this disastrous and life-changing news calmly to my husband, whose mother had passed away just hours earlier. I signaled to change lanes and was startled by f-bombs and cures from a young couple in the next lane to the rear and left of me. The drove past me, screaming through their open window, flipping me the bird. The lesson for me that moment was that you just never know what is going on in the life of the person in the next car. Treat them like a human being.
After my aging father was chased down and verbally assaulted by two young women for some sort of miscalculation, we now, whenever we are frustrated by an elderly driver, we always say to each other, "Check yourself, that's grandpa/grandma in that car."
(p.s.) Long, hard road but our baby girl made it and is now a healthy (albeit tiny) three year old ninja warrior)
Comment: #4
Posted by: J.C.
Mon Jun 13, 2011 10:47 AM
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Only time I remember, at the moment, a person being unjustly nasty to me happened in college. Of course it was a bitter female feminist.
A had broken my glasses and could not afford to get them repaired for about 6 weeks. All I had of my old glasses was one lens. I remember taking binoculars with me to classes so I could read what the teacher put on the blackboard. Sometimes I would just use my one lens as a monocle. It was a pain in the butt and the teachers did not like it as my classmates would laugh and it caused a distraction at times.
Anyway, one day I was studying for a test in the student lounge. I would look down at my book and then look up and memorize what I had just read. When I looked up, I would stare straight ahead and think about what I had just read until it was in my memory. When I looked straight ahead, anything beyond my table was a blur; just shapes, no details. I could tell a girl from a guy (most of the time) but that was about it.
Well this girl across the room came over to my table all mad and said: “Why don't you take a picture, it will last longer” and stomped off like a typical bitter feminist. Little did she know I was not staring at her, as I could not see her. If anything I was simply staring in her general direction.
Reminded me of the time I saw this guy on TV interviewing people on the beach asking them what they found most annoying at the beach. These two blond girls, with great bodies in a bikini swimsuit (that did not leave much to the imagination) said: “We hate it when guys stare at us.” Right.
Comment: #5
Posted by: SusansMirror
Mon Jun 13, 2011 1:52 PM
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I've hesitated to say this before but the repitition of these topics is resounding. Susan, I'm sure you are a great friend but it's beginning to sound like being your friend is hazardous to one's health. I have a very large circle of friends and I'm in my fifties but we've just never undergone the amount of numbers of health issues that your friends face. I'm definitely sorry that so many of your friends end up hospitalized but it really is remarkable. It's good for them that you're so caring.
Comment: #6
Posted by: Lesley Barnard
Mon Jun 13, 2011 2:19 PM
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Re: Lesley Barnard
Funny, I was thinking the same thing. Even the people that simply run into her car die before she can get the car repaired. LOL.
The woman at the gas pump had better take it easy for a few months.
Comment: #7
Posted by: SusansMirror
Mon Jun 13, 2011 7:54 PM
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