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Angst Over Rush-Hour
Traffic Has Its Cost
(By Stacy Jones, September 17, 2006) |
Thursday
started out as most any other day. Things were looking up. The
sun was shining, but a slight autumnal chill pervaded the air,
a soothing welcome from the intense heat that has stifled the
Mid-South for the summer months. And my brother Greg had invited
me to have dinner with him at a restaurant in the artsy, eclectic
district in midtown Memphis known as Cooper-Young, something
to which I looked forward. We had made plans for me to pick him
up and drive to the restaurant around 6 p.m., at which time we
would meet another friend at the restaurant.
Now I should have known better
than to allow myself a mere 30 minutes to drive from my East
Memphis home to Greg’s midtown condo in rush hour traffic.
Just last week, I learned through a similar experience that this
trip, which should typically take only 25 minutes when the city
streets aren’t clogged, requires at least 45 minutes when
both lanes are full of cars of people tunneling through the maze
on their way home from work. And forget about the Interstate,
which turns into a parking lot around 4:30 p.m.
Add to that: my frustrations over
driving in massive traffic do not manifest themselves well. I
become anxious, especially when trying to maneuver on a four-lane
street behind drivers in the left lane who will not take it upon
themselves to move past cars in the right lane. Instead, the
person drives alongside the car, so that no one can utilize the
left lane for passing. In other words, slower traffic should
keep right, as road signs often remind us.
Don’t worry: the kind of road
rage from which I suffer doesn’t threaten anyone’s
well being except perhaps my own. I don’t carry any guns
or knives in my glove box. Instead, my rage is more inward: my
hands perspire against the wheel, my body tenses, and very likely
my blood pressure rises a notch or two, as I seethe over the
slow-moving traffic. I know I ought to learn to take it easier,
to not “sweat the small stuff,” as the saying goes,
but driving in this sort of traffic is one of my greatest pet
peeves.
Nevertheless, I learned again—the
hard way—that between 5 and 6 p.m., getting from one side
of Memphis to the other takes an eternity. Or at least it feels
like it. Sometimes I think I can feel myself growing older, it
takes so long. I wouldn’t be entirely surprised one day
while driving in rush hour Memphis traffic if the sky opened,
and the trumpet call sounded for a Biblical rapture, but I wouldn’t
be able to respond because I would be stuck in Memphis traffic
and would miss it.
Nevertheless, I made it to my brother’s
abode in—you guessed it—about 45 minutes. I picked
him up at his front door and we headed off. I drove south on
McLean, and when I got to Union Avenue, I took a left, heading
east so I could swing a right on Cooper Street, only a few blocks
north of our destination.
Once I turned on Union, however,
it felt as though some miraculous hand had parted the waters.
Suddenly, the traffic cleared. I passed one car in the utmost
right lane, and settled in the middle of the three eastbound
lanes. As I headed toward a small slope in the street, I picked
up my speed a bit—partly from the dip in the road, I imagine,
but also partly due to my subconscious pleasure over no longer
having to follow behind hoards of other automobiles.
Just as I sped up a bit, Greg said,
“There’s a policeman.”
And he was right. I had forgotten
about the police precinct I was passing on the right side of
the street. Sure enough, the policeman followed suit and sped
out right behind me, blue lights flashing hell for leather in
my rear view mirror. I moved to the right lane, resigned to accept
my fate and find a safe spot to pull over. I had already reached
Cooper Street, so after the red light changed to green, I turned
and pulled into a church parking lot. I made ready by getting
my license and proof of insurance, putting down the window to
greet the officer’s smiling face.
“Did you know you were going
a little too fast?” the officer said without removing his
sunglasses.
“I was? How fast, sir?”
Playing along is always the best option at this point.
“I clocked you going 17 miles
over the speed limit,” he said. “I usually allow a
cushion of 11 miles,” he revealed. “But you were doing
52 in a 35.”
“I guess I wasn’t paying
attention,” I said.
“So are you saying you weren’t
paying attention to your driving, Ms. Jones?” he asked with
a smirk.
Now I think that anyone possessing
normal logical reasoning capacity would be able to finish my
assessment of the situation, to fill in the gaps. In other words,
the finished statement would have followed thus, “I guess
I wasn’t paying attention to HOW FAST I WAS DRIVING.”
However, this policeman either lacked logical capacity to discern,
or, more likely, he was feeling a bit antagonistic at that particular
moment. I’m hedging bets on the latter.
“No sir,” I said politely,
“I meant I wasn’t paying attention to the speed of
my driving.”
After he returned to his patrol
car for a few minutes, wrote me a nice little citation, and came
back to my window, he warned me to slow down. Something deep
inside me wanted to return the admonition, considering that I’ve
seen no telling how many policeman speed along streets without
any signal of emergency via flashing blue lights or sirens. Yet
I kept my cool and went on my way to enjoy dinner with my brother.
I haven’t yet called to find
out the amount of the fine I’ll be expected to pay. I’m
sure it will be hefty—at least in my opinion. But I have
vowed one thing: from now on, if I can help it, I’ll avoid
rush hour in Memphis at all costs. Because this time, it cost
me.
(Stacy Jones, a Southerner,
is a Master of Fine Arts student in fiction writing at The University
of Memphis. She is a native of Guys, Tenn., and her columns,
which appear on Sundays, are archived at Southern-Drawl.com.) |
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