Great Suburban Traditions: Number 14 – Rush Hour

Here we go again... (pic: SAHIP)

Around once a year I get caught up in the rush hour. I think that the reason I’ve never had a ‘proper’ career is that I still remember all the rush hours of my 20s, when I had the grave misfortune of going to work every day. Specifically, I remember how rush hours took at least two hours out of your day, every day, just so that you could get to and from a job that you hated.

     Yesterday I got caught in a traffic snarl around Dupont Circle in DC and – should we atheists turn out to be wrong - enjoyed a glimpse into the punishment I will likely undergo for eternity, having in the course of my life indulged in various activities not permitted by the bible. I will be in a line of traffic, and a long way up ahead I will see the light change from red to green. I will get ready to advance, and the cars and buses and trucks in front of me will rev a little, filling my nose and lungs with unpleasant fumes. Then the light will change back to red, with nobody having progressed a single inch.

    This will remain the same, for ever, and every time the light changes to green, I will retain a stupid hope that the traffic is going to move. I will never be able to see what is going on  up there – it could be road works, it could be an accident, it could just be the sheer volume of bovine commuters sitting stoically in their cars waiting out their lives, listening to the local traffic reports running through where all the problems are and why, but never mentioning the unexplained delay at Hell’s Dupont Circle.

      When jammed in like this, do people ask themselves, ‘What the fuck am I doing here?’ If they don’t, why not? How could you sit in this kind of traffic twice every day and not doubt at all the point and the worth of what you are doing? Why do I never see people abandoning their cars and shouting, ‘Ah, fuck this, I’m off to live on an organic farm in Montana.’ Then they run down the street waving their arms about and cackling at their new-found liberty, while all the other drivers look on with envy.

    I realise that people deal with commuting in different ways. For some, it’s the only time they get to spend on their own, away from family and work colleagues – as soon as the door is closed they make duck noises, fart like sailors, and sing random snatches of songs from the 1970s. Then once they’ve got all that out of their systems and settle down, they learn languages, listen to audio books, or sit with microphones wrapped around their heads talking earnestly, showing the other commuters that they are so important that they’re already on a conference call at 7.30am, or still on one at 7.30pm (“Need to talk to Tokyo”).

    Maybe if you do this every day you develop the precious virtue that deserts me when I’m behind the wheel – patience. Although, once the traffic loosens up a bit, you don’t see many drivers exhibiting this quality as they make a rush for the space ahead. Courtesy, caution and concessions are for fools naïve enough to think that there’s any reward here for fair play, while others steal ahead and make it back to suburbia ten seconds faster.

    You finally arrive at your silent, same-old destination and wonder, “Why was I in such a rush to get home?” Falling asleep to the imaginary preview in your head: Coming up in tomorrow’s episode – yet more of the same.

Should You Give A Bum A Buck?

Sticking plaster on a suppurating wound?

Here’s an every day scene from my every day life. I drive up to a T junction where the traffic light is on red. A man holding up a tatty cardboard sign saying ‘Hungry and Homeless’ shuffles towards my car. I feel troubled by his hunger and his homelessness. A dialogue starts in my head. Should I wind down the window and give him a dollar? Aside from the immediate alleviation of his hunger, why would I do that?

The charitable side of my brain says: “What's wrong with immediately alleviating hunger, you tight-fisted, mean-hearted bastard, all warm and secure behind your locked car door listening to your alt country indie-pop hard bop yadda yadda wank. How can you ignore this man’s plight? He is hungry. He needs money for food. Now. You have more than enough money. Give him a buck. Now.”

“Oh yeah?” says the resistant (read: ‘cheap’) side of my brain. “You think that if I give him a buck now that I’m in any way helping the plight of the hungry and homeless? Or am I just giving him a buck to make myself feel better? Maybe I’ll even feel a frisson of superiority over the woman in the car in front of me who shook her head and refused his plea.”

“It’s not all about you,” says Charity. “It’s not about you at all. It’s about his need for food, right here and now.”

Ballroom Burial

On Tuesday evenings I drive my daughter and three of her friends to choir practice. As they warm their voices up by talking fast or screaming simultaneously, four 12-year-old girls generate an unbelievable amount of noise, especially within the confines of a Passat. Once I’ve dropped them off, the drive home is a more relaxed, solitary affair, with no chorus of negative comment on my choice of music.

One of the traffic lights I stop at affords me a perfect view into the second floor headquarters of the Arthur Murray Dance Center in Bethesda. Between 7 and 8pm, it hosts what looks like a formal ballroom dancing class. Post-youth couples move gently around the room. This week they danced to Near Dark by Burial, at least from where I was sitting with my foot on the brake. The rhythm was slightly out of sync with the dancing, but that didn’t matter. For once in my day, I was not impatient for the light to turn green.

There are too many traffic lights, and way too few forms of entertainment to go with them.