A Driving Question

 

Jeff–Saturday

As with so many of us, it’s been two years since I’ve done a lot of things, and at the rate our world is learning the Greek alphabet, I wouldn’t bet against things getting worse before they get better.  Despite that foreboding, this week Barbara and I were blessed to share a couple of in-person face-to-face days at our farm with my brother and sister-in-law. 

We hadn’t seen them since our wedding in 2019, and though “seeing” may be a somewhat blurry euphemism–what with my being amid a cataract surgery regime–as always, we had a terrific time together.

They’d driven across Pennsylvania and New Jersey to attend an event in New York City and stopped by to visit us on their drive home.  My brother enjoys driving and they’re accustomed to 400-mile jaunts along America’s interstate highway system, making them potential witnesses to what I believe to be a pandemic-induced phenomenon on our nation’s highways. 

I’ve long viewed driving on Mykonos in high season to be the equivalent of Demolition Derby video games come to life; but over the past two years I’ve experienced somewhat similar surreal episodes taking root on New York and New Jersey highways and wanted their take on today’s highway drivers.

 

My thesis is:  there are more nuts on the road today than ever before.

I’m not talking about those operators of battery powered bikes now plaguing NYC streets (and sidewalks) with their cavalier disregard of one-way streets and traffic lights, nor the occasional muscle car driver intent on demonstrating drastically over-imagined NASCAR driving skills. I’m talking about mild-mannered, next-door-neighbor types at the steering wheels of traditional family cars.

For some time now, when driving back and forth to New York on Interstate Route 80, I’ve noticed a decided increase in unassuming cars weaving helter-skelter past vehicles in their way, or tightly tailgating until they can pass, often joined by other drivers in a seeming competition to achieve who knows what.

 

I think most would agree that civility is fraying on far too many fronts, as demonstrated by skyrocketing murder rates, and short tempers over otherwise mundane matters. For the many who manage to resist the urge to rage at the fates in front of family, friends, and colleagues, whatever calming influences those situations might offer fade away once they’re alone driving on a highway and left to focus on what’s next in store for them from a microbe that’s already affected their past in once unimaginable ways and threatens to wrest away their future.   

Is it any surprise how some, overcome with rage at their lost dominion over so much of their lives, seek to reclaim a modicum of that sense of power by firing down the highway in a wild effort to demonstrate to themselves that they still control their present?

 When I asked my brother and his wife if they agreed with my observation, they did, but with a caveat. 

When they drove into New York along Interstate 78, drivers behaved normally, but when they exited New York on I-80, drivers were as crazy as I described—“wild nuts filled with rage,” to be precise.

That left me pondering whether their observations supported my conclusion, or suggested another, e.g., (1) Folk entering NY behave normally, but those exiting are crazed, (2) Route I-80 folk are more tightly wound than I-78ers, (3) My brother and I are magnets for attracting crazies, (4) Their I-78 experience was a fluke, or (5) Something else. 

What’s your experience with drivers these days in your community? 

–Jeff

Where Do We Go From Here?

Jeff–Saturday

 

September marks a major event in my life.

 

No, it’s not that the tenth book in my Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis series--THE MYKONOS MOB--is available throughout September across all e-book formats for a mere $1.99 by clicking on this link. https://books2read.com/u/mKw7LZ

 

Nor is it the inevitable sadness I’ll feel as we approach next Saturday, and eye-witness recollections of that day 20 years ago in Manhattan return in a rush. I’ll write about that next week, on September 11, 2021.

 

Rather, it’s something seemingly mundane in the scheme of things, but quite significant to me.  For this week was the first time in twenty months Barbara and I ate in a New York City restaurant.  And by in I mean inside a restaurant.

 

About a month ago, when an optimistic Covid mood was still in bloom, we agreed to get together in New York at a neighborhood restaurant with a dear friend whom we hadn’t seen in two years. He’s one of the world’s top physicians, and someone on whose medical advice I’d several times entrusted my life--successfully.

 

We’ve been great buddies for many years, and though we have significantly different political positions on many issues, none of that has ever impacted our friendship.  I respect his views and how he presents them, and (I think) he respects mine.

 

Our first topic of discussion was the obvious elephant in the middle of everyone’s room everywhere on earth.  We had no difference of opinion on that situation. Covid is dangerous, now more virulent than before, and a worsening problem, but a communal exercise of common sense would allow us to conquer it.  The question is, how do you convince the unvaccinated of the error of their ways? 

 

For those who do not trust the safety of Covid vaccines, how many more hundreds of millions of vaccinations with extraordinarily high success rates do they need to see before they’ll accept its efficacy?  A hundred million? Five hundred million? A billion?

 

For some, statistics won’t matter, and I’m not just talking about off-the-wall conspiracy theorists convinced that Bill Gates is using vaccinations to implant tiny devices to track the vaccinated’s every move.  (I guess to pick up the few who aren’t already being surveilled courtesy of their cell phones.)

 

I’m referring to the honestly concerned and truly anxious who put their faith in anecdotal stories (which may or may not be true) obtained from a family member, a friend, a Facebook post, or simple gossip, that tell of those who caught Covid despite being vaccinated, or who experienced a bad reaction from a vaccine. They resist statistics demonstrating that the efficacy rate of Covid vaccines puts them among the top tier of common vaccines long administered for a myriad of other diseases, because even with a 99% success rate, when billions are successfully vaccinated there remain tens of millions with anecdotal tales to share.

 

Many vaccine resisters share a common trait. Rather than accepting a statistical reality and trusting science to protect them and their loved ones, they choose to entrust themselves to MAGICAL THINKING.

 

By that I’m talking about the sort of thinking that serves as an emotional security blanket for children who imagine reality does not apply to them. Magical thinking allows them to fly to the moon atop unicorns, swim beneath the seas amid mermaids, and soar like a bird through the sky, all without consequences. Personally, I treasure that sort of imagination in children.

 

But adults who think that their vitamins, pills, and exercise regimes alone will spare them from this plague, are engaged in magical thinking of a very different order.  One that might bring them a lifetime of grief, if not cost them their lives.

 

I pray for them.

 

Having addressed that problem, my friend and I moved on to swapping anecdotal observations on a related but different topic, the state of New York City.   New York has taken a big hit from Covid. You can tell from the vacant store fronts, shuttered businesses, homeless on its streets, exodus of many of its bulwark supporters to other regions, and a pervasive sense of lost direction.

 

New York will always be a player on the world stage. No doubt about it.  Those finger-like, Tower of Babel height, residential skyscrapers sprouting up in prime Manhattan locations are a testament to that reality--even though many apartments are virtually unoccupied.  Investors willing to pay humongous prices for the benefit of anonymously parking millions in Manhattan real estate without regard to the true value of their investments, seem willing to overlook how much they may lose in the transaction, taking consolation in how much they’ll get to keep.

 

Still, it’s strange how different the city feels, and as we said good night, our conversation left me wondering how to explain that feeling.  

 

Today, as Barbara and I drove back from the City to our farm, a thought came as I dodged a plethora of overtly aggressive drivers.  I’m used to that kind of driver. After all, I’ve driven in NYC since my twenties and spent many a summer on Mykonos among DUI macho tourists driving wildly, believing the gods of the neighboring holy island of Delos would somehow protect them from harm.

 

Yet, never had I experienced such aggression and patent road rage among drivers of practically every sort of vehicle, from motorcycles to eighteen-wheelers. Why is that, I wondered. I couldn’t put my finger on it. Then it hit me—at about the same time as an eighteen-wheeler jerked across two lanes of an interstate into the passing lane.

 

For many, getting behind the wheel transports them into an entirely different world, one offering them perhaps their only means of demonstrating a semblance of control over where their lives are headed. They live in a world where a Covid induced anxiety bordering on a mind-fog is real. Do we mask or not? Do we need a booster shot? How secure is my job? Will I lose my business? My home?  Will my children be in school? Will they be at risk of infection?

 

Their “will” questions and anxieties are endless, but as they sit behind the wheel exerting control over how they steer, how fast they go and when to brake, woe be it to those they see as infringing upon their remaining power over the direction of their lives.

 

I don’t know if I’m right or wrong on that observation, but if I’m right I’d venture to say there are a lot of others out there who’ve noticed a distinct change in what it now takes to drive defensively.

 

Stay safe.

 

–Jeff