Precious Cargo

I try to curb my road rage more during the high school-transport hours (ie. 7:30-am and 2-4pm) especially when I get stuck behind a slow moving family-van or cut off by a twitchy four-door. I try to assume mom/dad/other is distracted and trying to get her precious cargo home safely, and I definitely don't want to be the person who screws that up. I can't even stand to see kids crying/getting hurt/dying in movies or TV. (Just ask my mom - she wouldn't let me watch Titanic for a long time, not because of the nudity or whatever, but because there's a brief ((as in, seconds long)) scene with a dead baby in the water, and she knew that would tear me up and possibly give me nightmares. It nearly did!)



And when they are upset in real life... well, by which I mean genuinely sad or hurt, not the little brats who cry because their parents can't control them or only know how to communicate by pissing people off. And in those cases, I might be complaining about the kid crying, but what I'm really mad at is the useless parental unit who doesn't know that his kid needs to eat and sleep more than once a day.) But man, I saw this little boy sobbing outside the ice cream shop yesterday, and I knew it was because he dropped his parfait, and I was literally seconds away from buying him a new one myself...



Because, you know, that's just about the worst thing that can happen to you as a little kid. You know what I mean? That ice cream melting on the hot Texas sidewalk is literally tragic. It doesn't matter what happened five minutes ago, or what's going to happen in ten minutes, whether either of those things is good or bad. There are millions of people who suffer horribly and die every day, but you don't know that. All you know is that one minute ago life was light and sweet and cold and wonderful and now it's just hot and sticky and all that has been taken away.



And there's nothing I can do about those other people. I can't stop genocide or feed the millions of starving or put shoes on anyone's feet. I can't convince my government that universal healthcare IS more important than lowering the price of gas, or Ecuador's government that their forests are more important than the oil underneath them.



But dammit I can fix that one kid's broken smile and get him a new ice cream. I can ease his mom's stress for a few seconds. And I can slow my ass down on the highway, get home five minutes later than I wanted to, and drink my tea knowing I didn't kill anyone today.



This probably seems really weird and random to be thinking about, but it's not, I'll explain. I recently finished one of those stupid defensive driving courses. REALLy stupid. But derned if I don't have a tendency to "learn" something from every experience. It's the curse of the academic. Anyway, that's why I was kind of hyper-aware of my own driving today, and realized there's a marked difference in my road rage (and DAMN do I have road rage! In all honesty I shouldn't be on the road, I really shouldn't...) when I get caught on the road at those certain times of day. The internal dialogue went something like this:



"Hmm... did you know you're not screaming at that slow-ass van in front of you?"
"Well, it /IS/ three o'clock. School's out, it's probably a mom with kids."
"So?"
"So... I can't get mad at her for driving slow, that's her precious cargo!"
"Ah. Okay. ... You realize /you're/ somebody's 'precious cargo' as well, right?"
"Well it's different if I'm driving myself, if I get hurt it's my own fault, I can only blame myself for breaking my precious cargo butt."
"No, I mean you're /your mom's/ precious cargo!"
"... DAMMIT!" *fails to speed through any amber lights for the rest of the drive home*