I had a Kathy Bates movie moment when I was driving to work the other morning. It wasn’t a moment (thankfully!) from her movie “Misery,” where she tortures the famous writer by breaking his ankles, but one from “Fried Green Tomatoes,” where Bates runs her car into the VW Bug of the snotty, beautiful girls who steal the parking spot that she’s been patiently waiting for.
“Face it lady, we’re younger and faster,” the girls said, as they waltzed past her into the grocery store, arms around each other, laughing, after they take her parking spot. Bates sits stunned in her car for a moment, gets a fierce look on her face, then cries out the empowering word “Towanda!” before ramming their VW with her sensible sedan, laughing all the way. When the girls run out, horrified, she said, “Face it girls. I’m older and I have more insurance.”
I had left one freeway and was merging onto another one. It’s a little tricky, that entire merging situation, and I saw that there was traffic in both lanes on the road where I was heading. So I did the sensible thing, slowed just a little, and waited for the right lane to clear before I pulled into it. It’s a situation where yielding made sense. As I waited for, I don’t know, maybe two seconds, the car behind me honked.
It honked at me. Because I was waiting? For seconds? What did that driver want me to do? Ram my car into a miniscule spot in between a line of five or six cars that were chugging speedily along when there was a clear space at the end of the line?
I guess so.
Do you know what I wanted to do?
I wanted to stop. I did! I wanted to stop right there on that onramp area. I wanted to put my car in park. Get out. Wanted to walk back to the honkity car behind me and say, oh so politely, “What is your problem? Why are you honking? I waited two seconds. Two seconds for traffic to clear!”
Apparently, I was a little angry.
Of course, sensible woman that I am, I did not do this. By this time, a millisecond after the honking, traffic had cleared. I pulled onto the road. The honky car (a grey Porsche sports car) zipped into the fast lane and passed me. We both made it to the next red light at the same time. I wanted very badly to look over at the driver and make some kind of face or possibly a not so lovely hand gesture. Or honestly, just to get a look at him. Was he old? Young? A high school kid with friends in the car? Also, it could have been a woman driver.
I did not do this.
I turned right. He turned left. That was the end of it.
I tell you, I have been feeling a little fragile lately. This incident made my eyes tear up a little. I just didn’t get it. Life is not so very easy for many of us right now. It would be lovely if we could make an extra effort to be kind when we are out and about in the world, which is hard enough as it is. In line at the grocery store, or the bank, or Home Depot. Especially on the road and in parking lots. I try to give people grace: to let them merge, to wave pedestrians through when I come to crosswalks. It’s not that hard.
Of course, it wouldn’t have been appropriate or smart to get out of my car and have a little talk with the driver of that car. I know that. But it’s too bad that there’s not another way for us to connect, to have a conversation. So I could try to understand what he was feeling, and why he thought I shouldn’t have yielded but should have pulled right out onto the road, or why he was in such a hurry?
It’s the kind of thing that makes me wonder. And the fact that I had a little moment when I thought of doing some “Towanda-ing” myself? (But just with conversation. Not with stopping on the onramp, and then backing my car up and ramming it into the grey Porsche that was waiting impatiently behind me like Bates did. Although I bet that would have made the driver sorry that he honked at me! He would have wished that he waited politely!)
It’s something to think about. And it would be a good idea to pray for both safety and patience when I drive to work the next time.
Here’s a link to a YouTube clip of Bates and her “Towanda!” moment. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did: Kathy Bates “Towanda!”
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