Oh, Wisconsin!

Over the past few days, as things in Wisconsin escalate to atrocious levels and I read the protest signs in the videos on TV with growing irritation and think again that protesting is all well and good as a Constitutional right, but it sure doesn’t bring out the best in the individual, I feel a growing self-induced pressure to develop an educated opinion on the topic. For one thing, I am going to be a teacher. Those are my future colleagues out there and no matter how badly modern-day unions heighten my gag reflex and make me lose faith in American humanity, I would like to understand the situation as it relates to them, and also as it relates to me as a citizen. I also would like to form an educated opinion because I have an interview for a teaching credential program in a few days and Jonathan so kindly brought to my attention that they may ask me about this. Oh great. Chalk one up for absolutely not getting into this school. And thank God I had some interviews before this whole thing started or I would really be in the fire.

My problem is, that as I continue to research this current event, I keep getting hung up on the most basic moral issues I have with the entire process taking place in Madison. I have an enormous problem with people blatantly NOT doing their jobs and being legally ensured that they will not be fired for it. I don’t care who you are or what you do, if you are not doing your job, you shouldn’t be getting paid for it. I read an article once about the government offering agricultural subsidies to some Amish farmers. The farmers agreed to stop growing the crops, but they refused to take the proffered government money. They said that they would not take money for work they did not do. I was fairly young, but I can remember having such a profound respect for the integrity behind the Amishmen’s decision. It has always stuck with me and I think of it from time to time, when questions of work ethic come up in my own life. Though I would not have blamed the farmers for taking the money under those circumstances, I would want to be the type of farmer who did not take the money, despite the burden it might place on me.

The point is that if we want to hold our teachers or any other workers to high standards, if we claim that we want them to be competent and diligent, we must expect a level of professionalism and work ethic. And yet, unions nurture an utter lack of any of these positive characteristics. If people cannot motivate themselves to have these qualities (which, I have to say, I would greatly hope my children’s instructors would be able to do), there should at the very least be a risk in the workforce of losing your job if you lack them. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think people shouldn’t be allowed to protest. But if they want to protest under the circumstances that they are protesting, it should be a choice between going to the picket line and keeping their jobs. If they are adamant enough about their cause; if they truly feel that a vast injustice is being done and it needs to be stopped; if they can afford to hold staunch principles over the need to make a living, they will risk their jobs for the cause. And who knows, if it really is such a terrible wrong being committed, if the conditions really are unbearable, enough people will protest to make it dangerous and unlikely for their employers to actually fire them. This is the basic premise of a protest as it should be. But the inherent risk is a necessary part of the process. Otherwise, picketing simply becomes a platform for whiners.

I also have a problem with people who are in any of the “caring” professions going on strike when they should be with the people who need them. I’m not saying that a teacher’s altruism should outweigh his desire to make a decent living. Trust me, that is the last thing I’m saying; I don’t put a whole lot of faith in the common altruist. But if you want to convince me that teaching is an important profession, necessary for our children and our society and thus deserving of good pay and good benefits, first show me that you care more about your students than your special interest groups, and, more importantly, that you believe that your job is so important and necessary that you would not dream of missing days of work if it is not directly benefiting your students.

Furthermore, when people get into a group like this, it truly brings out the very worst in them. The signs people hold up at these sorts of fiascos are embarrassing at best and ignorant, fallacious, and disgusting at worst. I understand the need to make your voice heard. But then let your voice be intelligent and rational. Strongly support your opinion instead of coming up with angry tag lines that insult opposing opinions without actually proving that yours are superior. Don’t blindly repeat the ranting coming out of a nearby megaphone, like a bunch of Hitler-Jungend. Say something of value and convince people that you are right. If you tell me that it is impossible for a group to cause a stir in this way, I will tell you that you are wrong. What you really mean is that it is easier for a group to cause a stir the other way and I do not think this is a legitimate or convincing reason for doing it.

And don’t even get me started on unions. The modern-day union is as far from the original American unions of its ancestry as I am from Xerxes the Great. The risk of getting your arm ripped off by an unruly, poorly built textile machine is not the same thing as having to work an entire four hours straight without a fifteen minute break. Wake up and smell the coffee, people, just as it is your right to quit a job whenever you want to, it is an employer’s right to fire you anytime he wants to. Does that make life more risky? Certainly. Does it lower your job security? Perhaps. Or maybe it effectively balances out the job market. If you are good at your job; if you are competent and qualified, and financially and professionally “worth it” to your employer, you will get a good job. If you want a raise, because you need it and you think you deserve it, it is up to your employer to decide how “worth it” you actually are. Are you so good that they can’t afford to lose you, even at a heightened cost? Or maybe they can afford to lose you. Then it’s up to you to decide how much you need the raise. Do you need it because you want to take an extra vacation in June? Is that vacation worth the inherent stress and risk in finding another job that will pay better? Or do you need it because you can’t afford to survive without it. If you can’t afford to survive, the inherent stress and risk in finding another job that will pay better is probably worth it. There is a balance here between employer and employee needs. And a company that consistently mistreats employees, through poor working conditions, low pay, or any other way, will lose qualified employees to companies who are willing to take better care of their employees. Maybe if the education system was run this way, we would not have so many problems with the quality of our teachers and our curriculum.

Now enter the almighty Union. Why people who have a good thing (with a few unfortunate side effects) are willing to scrap it all for a bad thing (with a few hundred unfortunate side effects) is beyond me. Capitalism...gone. Democracy...gone. It’s all very inspiring. What used to be an attempt on the part of the working class to avoid being abhorrently taken advantage of, has now become a success on the part of the American privileged to have the “perfect job” (one in which they get an inflated salary, other people paying into their retirement funds, an inability to be fired regardless of competence level, and as much opportunity to get paid for not working – or working poorly – as for working at all) without having to have any qualifications or put forth any effort (besides, of course, the effort it takes to march around carrying pre-made signs and clamoring about unfairness).

So that’s how I feel about the situation in Madison. It has nothing to do with Walker – who I suspect is a jerk – and very little to do with the specific grievances of the specific people picketing in this specific circumstance. It is difficult for me to separate their problem out from the greater more general problem under which they are functioning. Do I want good things for workers? Yes. Do I support peoples’ right to assemble? Absolutely. But I neither support nor respect the manner or the pretenses of these protestors...or indeed of the senators who left the state. Lord help me when I have to join the Teachers’ Union!

-R.E.A.

I challenge anyone to tell me one thing that is innately wrong with being rich

I am the type of person who has never once in my life expected to grow up to be the kind of person with a whole lot of money. Okay, okay, I’ve fantasized about winning the lottery (although I’ve never bought a lottery ticket in my life). And it’s true that I never wake up in my imaginary grown-up house without looking out onto my imaginary 60,000 acres covered in imaginary trees and gardens and horses – and all those things, unimaginary, cost money, to be sure. But when I boil myself right down to reality, I have always been able to face the fact that my career choices (and yes, I have gone through several hundred) have never inclined even slightly toward the path of making-me-a-lot-of-money. So this is my disclaimer to anyone who will try to overturn my upcoming argument by saying something like, “the only reason you say that is because you have a lot of money/will have a lot of money/come from a lot of money/etc./etc./etc.” Do I know rich people? Yes. I even love a few of them. I also know and love some poor people. What I’m trying to say is that this argument is not a personal one for me. I am not defending “my people” or the “people I want to be.” I am simply trying to draw attention to what I consider a grave flaw in our developing American social mentality.

The other day I was watching some news commentary show and Roseanne Barr was on. (Now, as a side note, I would like to know how it happened that every Tom, Dick, and Harry Hollywood entertainer is suddenly considered to be an authority on politics simply for having an opinion. Just because the world knows your face [okay, the whole world might be a little bit of a stretch for Roseanne Barr, but at least anyone in the country born between 1952 and 1992], doesn’t mean you are magically validated to have a relevant argument. And yes, if you’re wondering, this DOES have to do with my pent-up aggravation over not being able to get paid to rant MY political opinions on national television.) Okay, so I am not going to insult liberals by grouping them all in with Roseanne Barr, because any rational human being of any political persuasion would only need to watch her speak for about two minutes before realizing that, regardless of the righteousness of her opinions, she is, in general, an irrational and inarticulate type of creature. But she did touch on something (over and over and over again) that I think is in keeping with many of the opinions in today’s America. Somehow, “Rich People” have become synonymous with “bad people.”

Now, I don’t know exactly how this came about, but I have some guesses. To begin with, most of the schmucks in Washington and New York and other places who are messing up our government and our lives are rich. And many of these schmucks are also bad people. I think we’re all in general agreement about that. But to group the two characteristics together is fallacious. (To say that somebody = A + B is not the same thing as saying he = B because he = A) Are they scumbags? Yes. But trust me, it wasn’t the money that made them that way. There is a concept we talked about in my domestic violence training class when we were discussing alcohol abuse. The general point was that, although alcohol may incite somebody to be violent toward someone else, it is not the cause of the violence. Id est, if a dude’s the type of person who hits his wife, he’s going to hit her with or without the alcohol. The alcohol just may make him feel more free to do it. I think this is exactly the case with politicians. If you’re a scumbag, you’re going to be one with or without the money; money just may make you more likely to pull a really scumbaggy move. So we can’t blame the corruption in our government and other areas of society on the money itself. Money just makes the corruption easier.

So what else is wrong with richness? Well, it makes poor people feel bad. And let’s face it, human nature being the way it is, even those of us who are not particularly poor always seem to find it extremely easy to list all the people who happen to be richer than we. What I mean is that Americans are privileged. Even people who are in America illegally are privileged. Before everyone gets their panties in a wad, let me explain that by privileged, I don’t mean that they are necessarily treated justly or rightly or that they have everything they want or need. What I mean is that, if you walk up to a person in, for example, the “Democratic Republic of the Congo” (which I put in quotation marks because it is neither democratic nor a republic), any person, – besides maybe some piece-of-crap government official or drug dealer – and give them the opportunity to leave the Congo and instead become an illegal immigrant in America, I bet you at least 9 out of 10 would take the opportunity. Why? Because for all that everybody loves to hate America for all her issues and inconsistencies (which I fully acknowledge she has), this country still has the highest standards for human rights of anywhere else in the world. That, my friend, is privileged.

I concede that you may be able to find some impoverished Americans who are on par with impoverished people in the rest of the world. But I suspect that the number is significantly, significantly lower than anywhere else. America also has an incredibly wide spectrum of incomes. Here you are not necessarily “rich” or “poor.” You can also be “middle class,” as well as “upper middle class,” “lower middle class” and any number of classes in between. And if you ask people what income “class” they are in, they consistently answer lower than the actual numbers imply. Maybe it’s because somewhere along the line, the concept of the American Dream changed to a delusion. Instead of America being the place where everyone has the potential to be wealthy, it became, in the minds of hopeful people, the place where everyone is entitled to be wealthy. So anyone who notices his neighbor has a nicer car (when I think about this, I am always reminded of the commercial where the guy is riding on his lawnmower in this pristine front yard in front of a nice house and he’s wearing this fake smile and he says, “I’m in debt up to my eyeballs...please help me.”) suddenly thinks himself poor and feels crappy about it. It does feel crappy to not be able to buy everything you want (obviously), but more specifically it feels crappy to not be able to buy the things you know would enhance the quality of your life. Here’s what I mean: it stinks to not be able to go to the store and buy the upgraded Apple iphone 4G with an eco-friendly sage green rubber case and $13 plastic screen guard to protect against any and all possible disasters that may occur on land or at sea. Everyone knows that stinks (okay, I’ll admit that I don’t even remotely want the upgraded Apple iphone 4G with or without eco-friendly protection, but you get my drift), but everyone also knows that you can’t always immediately have everything you want exactly when you want it. (Well, not everyone knows this. There was a little boy shopping with his mother at work the other day, carrying around a 40 dollar deluxe Lego set despite the fact that I personally heard his mother tell him eight times that she was not buying it for him. I’m pretty sure he didn’t know this lesson, especially gauging from his shrieks when she finally pulled the inevitable plug and physically pried the box out of shaking fingers. We all have our lessons to learn. Trust me, little kid, it’s still better to be young than to be old.) But most people know this lesson pretty well and they can come to terms with it. C’est la vie. But the line gets foggier.

I think everyone envisions a certain style of living for themselves. I don’t just mean, “oh, yeah, I want a nice car!” I mean, we all picture the ways we want to live our lives. As an example, I’ll paint you something similar to my personal picture: I’m somewhere rural. Somewhere with fields and trees and horses. I have a huge garden and I can things in the summer to eat in the winter. Every now and again I have a glass of wine with dinner. I drive a crappy old car, but it has four wheel drive and can take me wherever I want to go. I just toss my dogs in the back seat and jet. I run and hike a lot. Some weekends, I drive into town in my fancy pants and heels and go dancing. I write. In my grown-up picture, there is also a man (presumably my husband) and several children in my painting. (I’m not there yet, but I still have the picture). That’s it in a nutshell. But only the surface. What do these things really mean to me? They mean that I lead a healthy, active life: good food, good exercise. They mean that I work at a job that I love (writing). They mean that I feel good: physically, mentally, and spiritually. Those are the things I really want: health, happiness, security, peace of mind. My picture is probably vastly different than yours, but I bet a lot of our things mean the same thing to us. Do health, happiness, security, and peace of mind cost money? Not necessarily. But does my picture cost money? Absolutely. Money for land and seeds and wine and gas and dog food and running shoes and hiking boots and fancy pants, and high heels. (Wow, do a remarkable number of my things have do with spending money on shoes? I might have a problem. But that’s another topic.) My point is that it is much harder to accept the fact that we do not have enough money to purchase the things that give us the lifestyle that we desire, because they are so closely linked in our minds with the intangible things that we really yearn for (health, happiness, security, peace of mind). And we deserve these things. And we need these things. Do you see the fuzzy line between “things-we-want” and “things-we-need?” Running shoes are not imperative to my existence, but yet in my mind they are so closely linked with good health that they are practically the same thing. I want running shoes; I need good health. That’s the distinction. But even writing it down makes me feel awkward. Because, somewhere in the back of my mind, I am under the conviction that I need those running shoes as I need good health.

And right now, I am poorer than the guy down the street who can afford new running shoes anytime he wants them. Hell, he could even afford to buy me new running shoes along with his own. And his richness makes me feel bad. Or if not bad, at least frustrated, keenly aware of what I am unable to do. But does that make him bad? Is it his fault that I can’t afford my own running shoes? Is he undeserving of his running shoes simply because I can’t have mine? I would argue that his money situation and mine are mutually exclusive. They have nothing to do with each other and thus my feelings about my own situation cannot be blamed on his situation. Thus, the fact that the existence of rich people makes poor people feel bad also does not seem a valid argument for making “rich” and “bad” one and the same.

So what is so wrong with being rich? Ms. Roseanne Barr is not the only reason that I know we have this mentality against the rich in this country. For one thing, what is the deal with not having a flat tax system? If we are so eager to be “fair” and equal in this country, this seems highly hypocritical. I don’t care what you claim the purpose of having separate tax brackets is, what it ultimately does, besides everything else it may or may not do, is punish people who make a lot of money. Okay, maybe you will say that “punish” is not the right word. But at the very least, it is detrimental, discouraging to those who are “rich,” those who have, quite probably, worked just as hard to earn their money as the poor guy down the street worked to earn his. Take me, slaving away in a big bookstore with crappy pay. Do I work my butt off? Yes! (Did you not hear me tell you about the shrieking Lego kid; my job is exhausting!) But do I need any advanced skills to do my job? Not at all, really. My job could just as well be given to a reliable middle school student. How about Boeing’s IT guy? Could a middle school student do his job? Certainly not. Could I? Heck no! He’s working his butt off, just like I am, probably, but he’s got skills and his skills earn him money. So what? We tax the hell out of him for having skills? We call him bad? We assume he is corrupt and greedy and undeserving simply because he has paved a way for himself that makes him more money than we make?

President Obama thinks that “at a certain point, you’ve made enough money.” And Nancy Pelosi says that not only should we “equalize income,” but we should also, “limit the amount the rich can invest.” Now, I can understand people wanting to assist poor people, but what is this obsession with doing it by bringing down the rich ones? You know what a rich person becomes when you take away all his money? A poor person. If you keep up at that rate, you’re going to have used up all your rich people and then what will your poor people do? (None of which, of course, is even the point.) What I’d like to ask all the people who think that being rich is so terrible is: what characteristics should a person have to be a good member of society? It seems to me that, as a society, we should be targeting the types of people who are not upstanding society members, whether they be rich or poor, instead of targeting people off of the over-generalized assumption that because they have money they must have done something wrong. I challenge anyone to tell me one thing that is innately wrong with being rich. It does not behoove us as a society or as individuals to condemn someone based on jealousy or spite. Is there, then a good reason for condemning our rich, or has wealth merely become a scapegoat?

-R.E.A.

Meanderings of a musing bibliophile

Ever since I was little, I have been slightly in awe of librarians. I’ve always suspected they have the most secretly joyful and subtly enviable profession out there in the world. Imagine, sitting all day in the middle of a room packed full of books. Old, brittle, well-read books that are perhaps outdated but none the less beloved. Books worn by curious hands, careful and uncareful, but yearning all the same. Yearning for something, whether they find the answer between the books’ pages or not. Yearning until they are satisfied and a new yearning takes its place; or yearning always unsatisfied in star-crossed happiness. The library is as much about the people who read the books as it is about the books themselves.

When I was little, I was also slightly in awe of librarians because my particular librarian, the one who checked me in and out when I came and went with my mother and our armloads of books, was stern and dower with a set scowl on her face, disinclined to talk or to smile. In my beautiful, young world, I had never met a grown-up who disliked me so I didn’t quite believe this could be the case with her, but certainly she didn’t appear to like me very much. In fact, what scared me a little bit was that I suspected that she was actually mad at me, for some past offence I didn’t know I had committed and for which, being unaware of what it was, I could never atone myself. The librarian never hesitated to tell people to hush up when they were being too loud, even when they were only little children, littler than I, there with their mothers. If you forgot to get your library card out before you set your books on the counter to be checked out, she just stared at you without saying anything until you realized your grave mistake. My library card, of course, was always ready, perched obligingly atop my book stack and I would stand on my tip toes and set the books down gently on the counter to avoid a reprimand.

The same lady is still my librarian and I wonder every time I go in if she remembers me growing up there. Year in and year out, I have tiptoed into that library, read, checked out books, studied, paid late fees. Sometimes months go by before I go in again. College studying and responsibility and a more expendable income make me a less frequent visitor of the dear old place. She never seems to change at all, though I’ve known her without knowing her for twenty one years.

But something is different. I’ve seen her laugh with some of the other librarians a time or two. And the other day when I went in I noticed that she got cold and had to put on her sweater – a very human action for someone I once suspected of being slightly supernatural. Also, I love her now, which always sheds a kinder light on people. I love her because I have known her almost all my life and I love her for what she represents to me and I love her for being slightly scary but good at her job just the same. I love her for all the things she must know and I love her for being the type of person I wish I knew better. And I’m not scared of her anymore.

The other day I took a walk to our new library to return a book. I love that I can walk to the library in less than five minutes now. Love that it’s tucked in right next to our puny city hall in what I think is the only shopping center belonging to this town. It is just a wee slip of a library. One small room with a handful of bookshelves lined up and a desk off to one side behind which the two librarians were standing. Two young, chatty, laughing librarians, eager to give us a tour of the room whose every corner we could already clearly see from where we were standing. They were nothing like my librarian. And yet, as I looked at them, standing there behind the library counter, I realized that the course of twenty years and the new, unfamiliar demeanors hadn’t changed anything. I am still in awe. Born of good-natured envy and heartfelt curiosity, and this great longing to spend my day sitting among these benevolent books. To walk around the little room and touch every one. To keep them shelved and organized; to hold the hand of a bright-eyed young reader and pull just the right book off the shelf and place it into his eager little arms. To make sure the bindings are crisp and the pages un-dog-eared and to tend to the old, worn tomes with glues and threads and presses. To be a keeper of books. To linger in the soft, dusty smell of them.

If my little corner bookstore ever comes into fruition – red brick mortared in, wooden bookshelves built up, small purring cat sprawled in a patch of sunlight. If I ever find myself behind an unassuming wooden counter, sipping hot tea, facing a little red door with a small bell eagerly anticipating the tentative entrance of some precious, curious customer, I hope that it will feel just like a library, warm and rich and full of the histories and heartbeats of the books and their authors and of the people who come to run their searching fingers along the shelves; old and young alike (books and customers), where money is only exchanged to keep the roof up and the cat fed. The kind of place that inspires fancy, and sagacity, courage. And awe.

-R.E.A.

A letter

Dear January 1, 2011,

The 364 days following you have a lot to live up to. I have spent nearly 24 other years full of joy and beauty and grace and mercy and love and wonder and blessings. I have spent countless hours nestled in the sand and good books and the love of my family, feeling God and the world wash over me and wrap around me and I know what happiness is about. Just this last year, a hundred little blossoms in my life bloomed, for better and for worse. But mostly for better.

The prospects of things to come are enough to make my heart and mind do back flips every time I think of them. I have little inklings of where I will go and what I will do, and a hundred million emotions to go along with the inklings, mostly fear and excitement and a couple different kinds of bittersweet. But they are merely inklings and the real prospect of 2011 for me is all the wild, unruly, boundless uncertainty of it. The 364 days to come, dear January 1, hold a lot of responsibility in that boundless uncertainty.

I wrote once that 2010 would be either the best or the worst year of my life. It was neither. That was a frivolous, theatrical remark to make to begin with, and entirely impossible to quantify (though quantification is not nearly as relevant as it is sometimes supposed to be). But 2010 was beautiful and surprising and the grave fears with which I started it out were alleviated. 2010 was remarkable and unremarkable, as the best years are, and, what’s more important I love it with the fullness of my heart. This, too, places high expectations on the 364 days to come (large shoes to fill and all that).

Besides all this, the world is tens of billions of years old, and the pressure a single year must have to make a difference in the whole huge vastness of it must be rather daunting. Nor am I the only living thing placing a hundred million conscious and subconscious bets on the coming year (even excluding all the new year’s resolutions pertaining to exercise or weight loss). I don’t envy you the universe’s demands, 2011, although I suspect that they are linked exponentially to the greatness of your potential.

And I have no particular words of encouragement. Certainly the year is more adept at its own success than I. So long as it is reckless and upright and paradoxical, it must succeed magnificently and as for the amount of work we will all put it through, well that is the nature of its existence and I extend no pity. Like people, 2011 is entitled to nothing. Life is for living.

But this letter is to you, January 1, 2011. (Because perhaps the writing of a letter to an entire year is too intimidating for me.) But also because – if I may be so presumptuous – there are things I wish for you. Small day. Small moment. Things that are more within my realm than the hugeness of this whole year which will, ultimately, do-with-me-as-it-will.

Here are the things I want to tell you:

Wiggle your toes, January 1. Wiggle your toes in the Milky Way or in the Nile, or in some small, obscure, marshmallow cloud or creek somewhere and indulge in just being you.

The grave responsibilities of the world are not yours, though you play a hand in them. Play your hand with grace, but don’t let it weigh down your heart. The smallest of things – even one 365th of a whole – can make an enormous difference. Make that difference, but have faith that others will make a difference too.

You can be a sleepy day, January 1. With the whole year ahead. Be sleepy and gentle and soft, but also kind and generous and wonderful for you are setting this year’s stage, you are planting the year’s wildflowers, you are making the first impression.

Though you are small and fleeting, flourish, dear day. Be gusty and charming and confident. Don’t shy from challenge or sadness or change or other things-which-make-us-grow. Learn everything you can and if you must err (and you must), err toward sensibility before apathy and credulity before mistrust.

In truth, these are things I wish for you and me, both, January 1. And all “the good ones,” whatever corners and grand moments they occupy this year. It is nothing like the wisdom of the mountains or the ubiquity of the wind. It has neither the wit nor the timelessness of the writer-I-hope-to-be. It is, January 1, merely-me to merely-you.

With Love,

R.E.A.

P.S. Please write back.

It’s Christmastime and I don’t want to be like those people in the parking lots at the mall

I am an angry driver. I know this because, for example, the other day I spent ten minutes parked in a parking lot writing down how I feel about turn signals. This is what I wrote:

“Turn signals are not optional. They’re a part of driving – or at least driving-as-we-know-it. If you’re the type of person who drives, you don’t just randomly get to be the type of person who doesn't use your turn signal. There’s a reason we don’t give six year olds driver’s licenses, besides the fact that their feet won’t reach the peddles. A car is a piece of heavy machinery that, without competent supervision, can drive over a cliff at 100 miles per hour, or ricochet around corners without warning the life-loving humans in the general vicinity.

“Putting on your turn signal should practically be a reflex. Like turning the lock before running out the front door, or shutting the toilet lid before you flush. Not doing it should feel more conspicuous than doing it.

“I understand that there are situations where a turn signal is not necessary – driving up the 15, for example, between Nowhere and Barstow, when you haven’t seen another car in 157 miles. But seeing as how the last time I drove around Long Beach without seeing another car for 157 miles was...never, I don’t understand why turn signals are so scarce around here.”

I also know I am an angry driver because I am only half kidding when I say I’m going to attach a light-up neon sign to my bumper that blinks the word MERGE in enormous letters every time someone fails to merge properly, a fairly simple task that a surprisingly large percentage of the driving population apparently never learned.

Every time I am stuck in traffic I am not only annoyed, I begin contemplating the dangers of overpopulation and considering the possibilities of launching the worst of the drivers around me into orbit around some other planet, not only relieving the traffic, but also relieving the human race on earth of a portion of its stupid gene. The only way to refocus my brain to anything less homicidal is to roll down my windows and start singing “You’re the Reason God Made Oklahoma” at the top of my lungs. I’m serious. I do all of these things.

I know my spontaneous anger at random drivers is (at least sometimes) irrational. I know I make driving mistakes all the time and have no way to communicate my apology to the person in the other car who is probably contemplating the possibility of launching me into orbit, or something much worse. Somehow I can’t seem to give anyone else who’s driving the benefit of the doubt. If you see my glaring, glazed-over face and my angry white knuckles death-gripped to the wheel, I am probably in the process of summoning the wrath of karma from wherever it resides in my dark mind down upon your head and - assuming karma even remotely listens to me, which I’m pretty sure it does not - you had better hope that you have done something in your life akin to saving starving orphans, as this is your only chance of redemption.

Anyway, the point is that I’m trying to be a less angry driver. I like driving. I like listening to my music loud and rolling my windows down and blasting the heater on my feet so my toes don’t freeze off (which, between the months of September and May they are consistently at the risk of doing). I like being lost and passing through places I never knew or cared existed and suddenly finding that I do care. It’s not the driving that I dislike. It’s the other drivers. And if I get right down to the root of the problem, it’s not even the other drivers themselves, the mothers-fathers-sisters-brothers-aunts-uncles-friends who are driving down the road. It’s the shameless, spineless, vast rudeness of the other drivers that really gets me.

I’ll be honest, when I first realized I had a problem, I considered alternatives to the obvious learn-how-to-manage-your-rage solution. For several months, I decided to try using my horn as a signal of my aggravation, not only in times of danger, but also when the driver in the other car was obviously a moron and needed to be taken down a peg or two. I realized this was a bad solution for two reasons. One, I never think to use the horn until it is too late, even in situations that are actually dangerous and where the horn could really come in handy. Somehow, I am unable to locate the great, giant anywhere-in-the-middle of my wheel and pound down on it quickly enough to make any sense. Come to think of it, perhaps I should get my reflexes or hand/eye coordination checked out by a doctor, as I can see how this could be detrimental in other aspects of my life. Second, the situations in which I contemplated using the horn began to get out of control. There are many, many let’s-walk-out-into-oncoming-traffic-with-our-two-strollers-and-fifteen-kid pedestrians I really wouldn't mind scaring the dumb out of instead of politely slowing down to a halt to accommodate their stupidity. The same is true for some bikers, skateboarders, and police cars...you can see how the idea was becoming more and more dangerous.

The thing is, I’m never actually rude to other people in traffic. I don’t believe in that stuff. I’m just blood-boiling mad by the time I finally get home and I’m really not thinking very kind thoughts about my neighbors either. In fact, I’m generally thinking that a planet with no such thing as neighbors – or any kind of people – might not be a bad idea. I've lived in suburbs my entire life and somehow I am still not even remotely used to how darn many people are here. We’re seriously like ants, teeming all over the earth, except we’re bigger, more colorful, and less organized. It’s not like road rage is my first hint that I should be living somewhere in the middle of 60,000 acres in Wyoming where my only company is the people I don’t wave off my property with a shotgun. And I don’t count PCH in any of my complaining here because I’m pretty sure I could drive 60,000 miles on PCH – people or no people – and not feel upset about it. It’s just that driving bumper to bumper down the street with obscene quantities of retail stores on either side of the road is pretty much the height of depressing. It’s so easy to begin contemplating all the numberless gorgeous places in the world that you've ever been, or never been and only dreamt about. And that way lies insanity.

But here’s the thing, it’s Christmastime, and, as you may have heard me mention before, I really don’t want to be like all those people in the parking lots at the mall. Besides which, I haven’t yet received a memo from God or the universe letting me know when the opportunity to squat on 60,000 acres in the middle of Wyoming may come my way, which means that, for the time being at least, suburbs are my fate. Seal Beach Boulevard, Tustin Avenue, Freeways 405, and 22, all the wonderful people of Southern California, these are my routes and driving buddies on the current road trip of my life. And since I have neither the power – nor probably, when all is said and done, the heart – to really send all these people into orbit around another planet, there are really only a couple things left for me to do if I have any chance of keeping my sanity through 2011: toss the map in the back seat, roll down the windows, turn up the heat, and hit play...”Santa Monica Freeeeewaaaaaaaaaaay, sometimes makes a country girl, bluuuuuuuue...”

-R.E.A.