BY REBECCA TODD
On Dec. 7, Monday morning commuters awoke to snow, ice, and a driving disaster. It was the first real snow of the year and a regular winter wonderland. In other words, we were all left wondering, “Why does the first snow of the year always make drivers crazy?”
The slick roads are just a part of what makes me crazy. Sure, the first snow of the year is exciting. What a rush to white-knuckle your way into work and pry your fingers off the steering wheel with the tire iron when you get there. You just have to love that.
What really frosts my windshield, however, is not the inclement weather. It’s the guy in the four-wheel drive truck that inevitably barrels up behind me and rides my bumper when I’m driving on an icy road. Let me just say for the record, four-wheel drive owners, I don’t care if your truck will take you through a three foot cornfield mud-bog on a beer-ridden Saturday night. It gives you no power over icy roads, so kindly keep it off my bumper. When you start to slide, I don’t want your giant metal atrocity plowing over my little sedan.
Power is the key word here. Those four-wheel drive owners feel empowered when they are driving on snow and ice. It’s good, really. I’m glad they feel secure. I just wish they would remember that the rest of us might not feel all that confident with a giant truck attached to our tail end. Granted, they hold the power in this situation, but the point is, the abuse of power is what is suffocating this country.
It’s never surprising when you hear about politicians, over-paid CEOs, and perhaps rich golfers abusing power. We hear this sort of story virtually every day. It usually prompts me to roll my eyes and grab the remote in search of “real” news. But that’s not where the power-plays end.
It’s been said that — paraphrasing, here — bad things roll down hill, meaning, of course that we are all used to the abuse of power from above. When things go wrong, they usually start at the top and land on the little guy at the bottom. Sometimes, however, the little guy gets a sense of that power and he finds the strength to blow it up.
And sometimes the urge to wield that little bit of power is overwhelming. Perhaps the utility company doesn’t like your tone when you call so they make you wait eight hours at home until they decide to show up. If you even walk out to your mailbox, you will find a note on your door saying “sorry we missed you.” That’s right, they are waiting and watching. Or maybe your garbage man misses that one reeking bag of trash filled with rotten tomatoes and fish bones (I don’t know why one would have such a bag, but let’s just say you do), and you are forced to either hold on to it for one more week or put it in your car and dispose of it yourself. Perhaps you seem snippy at your favorite restaurant and your waitress or cook slips up on your order ... just a little bit on purpose.
It happens. And I’m not saying I condone it, but every once in a while, in a world where power seems to be the ultimate goal, and the powers that be like to hold it over the heads of the rest of us, it is at least occasionally understandable.
Unless, of course, you are in a big truck riding my bumper.
— Rebecca Todd is a freelance writer from Clayton. Contact her at btodd@tds.net.
