The Traffic is Terrific

My wife looks forward to this time of year with a certain amount of dread.  She knows that soon we will load our little family into the car and head to some relative’s house far away for Christmas.  It’s not the relatives she dreads – I’ve had a talk with her about this and stressed that she should dread them more than she does, but she’s too filled with the Christmas Spirit and all that humbug – it’s the getting there that she dreads.  The many hours spent by my side in heavy holiday traffic, watching as I slowly, inevitably, transform into, in her words, a maniac.

I of course have no any idea what she’s talking about.  I looked up that word and feel certain that I am not “characterized by ungovernable excitement or frenzy,” nor is my behavior synonymous with the terms “lunatic” and “madman.”  At least not while I am at the controls of a motor vehicle.  Perhaps while reading Proust.

But she insists.

And since she is generally right about everything, to prove that I am a reasonable person, I’ve been forced to reassess the situation.  I will admit that as the drive wears on with no appreciable abating of the traffic volume, my initial annoyance may escalate to frustration and anger and even, perhaps six or seven hours in, to blind rage.  An example that my wife always brings up is Christmas of 2008 when I tail gaited that motherfucker for 200 miles because he fucking cut me off the shit for brains when he had no godly reason to change lanes RIGHT THEN except to PISS ME THE FUCK OFF which if that’s what he wanted, god dammit that’s what he got!  My wife did not seem to follow the subtleties of my reasoning, insisting that it was an old man and his wife, that I was going to kill us all, and finally that we shouldn’t have followed them off the highway, down their street and into their driveway and for goodness sake stop blowing the horn now – they’ve gone inside and are probably calling the police!  In retrospect, she had some good points.

My wife also reminds me that our 3 year old son is at an impressionable age and picks up language quite readily.  She’s tired, she tells me, of explaining to her playgroup friends why he calls their children such bad things just after Christmas.  I suggested that she say our little one learned it from his cousins, whom, you'll remember, I'm trying to convince her to dread.  However, she’s an honest person.

But I think I am convinced now.  On a recent drive, from the back seat in his cute little voice, my son asked me why everyone in all the other cars are fucking idiots.  At that very moment, I felt proud of my son – so perceptive, so reasonable, he’s really going places, that one is!  Then I looked over at my wife.  Talk about a maniac!  Eyes wide and glaring, face turning red.  I was frightened.  “This is YOUR FAULT!” she said in a terrifying whisper-scream.  “Honey,” I said, “I think you’re becoming characterized by ungovernable excitement or frenzy.”  

But of course, she’s right.  It is my fault and I must find a solution.  The easiest fix would be for her to drive, but the only thing worse than my actual driving is my back-seat driving, which turns her into, let’s say, a madwoman.  Better to have only one “maniac” in the car than two.  So I see only one way out: I’m going to drink a liter and a half of wine just before we leave and proceed to pass out in the passenger seat leaving her to drive in peace.  I don’t think she’ll have a problem with that.