The Art and Craft of Passing out of Slavery

I'd like to highlight a different story of racial passing and this story includes gender bending too! Dolezal seems to be enjoying her spotlight a little much and I thought we could give a little attention now to a more noble passing.

My now defunct one-woman show featured the true story (and real quotes) of a legally black female slave who dressed as a white man to escape slavery in the South. These are the sorts of conditions that make deception something I can sympathize with. This segment of my show did not feel right in first person as I worried (silly me!) I could be insulting, appropriating, and presumptuous if I donned a fake accent and pretended to be a technically "black" slave, so it alone was written in 3^rd person. Since the show is never now likely to see the light of day, I present to you: 1/6^th of the moth-balled Sisterhood of Kings: True Stories of Women in Power and Pants. In it, I portrayed six women who dressed up as men to achieve their dreams, or just survive.  Please note that this is written as a script, not an essay.

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Ellen Craft grew up in her father's house in the deep South, Georgia. It was the 1840's and her father had slaves. One of her father's slaves was Ellen's mother. And although Ellen appeared white, not black, she was still legally black and a slave. When she was 11, she was given to her older half sister as a wedding gift and that is how she came to live in Macon, Georgia and to eventually meet William, also a slave.

Her half sister was thrilled with their marriage because any children that Ellen and William had would automatically be her property, to sell or use as she wished.

And you thought you had problems with your sister.

Being actual people, with actual dreams of their own, and actual feelings, Ellen and William decided that as long as they were slaves they would never have children. They would never bring in to that world a child, a person, whose fate would be to be treated as property. Never. But … they did want children. And so they decided to figure out a way to escape to the North.

Ellen had already dismissed several of Williams unlikely plans when he finally suggested that Ellen could pretend to be a man, a white man, and William would be her slave.

No – no –Ellen could not imagine how she could pull that off, could not imagine wanting to, could not imagine living as a man, not just a man, but a slave owner. There were too many complications, too many possible pit falls, and the risk, should she be caught, would be too great.

But, William prodded, hadn't people always assumed she was the legitimate child of two white people?

And hadn't she gotten extra beatings just for that?

And didn't she know how to talk like the whites, working in the house?

Maybe – maybe, Ellen said.

William took on extra work, earned extra money, and piece by piece purchased the tools she would need.

Ellen and William got four days off for Christmas.

And early on the morning of December 21, before anyone else was awake, Ellen began to transform: 

First William cut off her hair.

To hide her smooth cheeks, Ellen tied on a toothache bandage.

William wrapped her right arm in a sling filled with medicine faking arthritis because she had never learned to write - so when she had to sign for her tickets, she could reasonably say she was unable to do so.

She pulled on her pants.

William slipped a suit coat over her shoulders.

And with the top hat and green gentleman's glasses of the time, this woman, considered her

father's prettiest daughter, became a man, a frail bespectacled deaf man with a toothache and a very, very attentive slave.

William got Ellen, now going by the name of Mr. Johnson, settled in her car, then took his place in the "Negro" car. They were careful to not look out the windows, to not, in their curiosity, reveal their own faces, and be recognized. For here, in their home town, the danger was greatest.

First, the worst possible thing happened. William's boss came to the station, suspicious. William could hear him urging the ticket agent to search the train.William slouched further and pulled his hat over his eyes and just when the cabinet maker looked through his window, the whistle blew and the train chugged forward.

Then the other worst possible thing happened. The man who sat next to Ellen was the neighbor, Mr. Cray. And he turned to her and said, "It is a fine morning, sir."

She did not know what to say.

Why was he talking to her?

Did he already know?

Had he been sent to find her?

This was just the first step of their plan, would it be foiled so soon?

Ellen did not respond, she didn't know how, she simply stared out the window.

Her heart pounded hard and loud and her hands sweat and she could barely breath.

Mr. Cray spoke louder "It is a very fine morning, sir. It is a very fine morning sir. It is a very fine morning!!!" Until Ellen felt she had to respond, to stop this scene "Yes."

"Sir, I think the gentleman is deaf," a passenger who'd overheard the exchange, intervened.

"Yes, and I shall not trouble him anymore." And Mr. Cray disembarked at the next stop. And with that Ellen knew, with a disorienting sense of irony, that she could pass as a Southern gentle man and she could manage a curve ball.

Ellen had many more close calls. The entire trip, she'd had to listen to the craziest stuff.

A rich woman carrying on about how her stupid slaves wanted to be free and were always running off,and how her stupid husband had given them their freedom on his stupid death bed,but she'd altered the final will:

"I knew he was too good a man to do such an unkind thing, had he been in his right mind, and therefore I had the will altered." she said.

And Ellen who'd stayed out of numerous similar conversations could not refrain,

"Do you mean, madam, that willing the slaves free was unkind to them or costly to you?"

"To the slaves! It seems cruel to turn [epithet for them] loose to shift for themselves, when there are so many good masters to take care of them."

Very carefully, Mr. Ellen Johnson shut her mouth tight, because if the words that were on the tip of her tongue were to actually make it out, all would be lost.

Ellen also had to endure being lectured for treating her slave too kindly.

One Army general demonstrated the way she should really talk to her slave.

No “please.” No “thank you.” But a string of expletives -- here let me show you-- that would keep him in line.

And she was tortured by several young women who found Mr. Johnson to be adorable, no matter how sickly, and wanted to marry him. Mr. Johnson's only response was the refuge of many a non-talkative traveler: pretend to be asleep.

At Charleston, a major slave market, the couple found that Mr. Johnson would have to sign a form to leave the town with her slave.

"I'm afraid I can't sign." Ellen pointed at her bandaged arm. "You'll have to do it for me."

The official eyed the two suspiciously, "I shan't do it!" he said.

And here was a stand off. Each of them eying the other. The crowd gathering, craning their necks to see what and who was holding up this line. And into the middle of this all stumbled a tipsy Army officer, the very one who'd schooled Ellen on how to speak to her slave. [Slurring] "Oh Mr. Johnson, oh I know this family like the book!"  And he signed for them.

Later, the official apologized to Mr. Johnson saying "They make it a rule to be very strict at Charleston. If they were not very careful, any damned abolitionist might take off a lot of valuable … property."

But in the final stretch, from Baltimore to Philadelphia, William went missing.

Mr. Johnson's bags were unloaded and there she stood, a man, alone at the train station.

And William had not made it.

But by now, Mr. Johnson knew just what to do: Mr. Johnson panicked about his missing, possibly escaped, recalcitrant slave and the crew panicked with him. For if a slave escaped from Baltimore, Baltimore had to pay his owner the going rate.

William was finally found in the baggage area where all the slaves were put during the journey. After four long treacherous days, poor William had fallen asleep and no amount of unloading could have woken him.

One final train ride and then, there they were on Christmas morning, William and Mr. Johnson had finally arrive in Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly love.

And in order to be free, Ellen had to dress as a man. As unnatural as it seemed to her, as horrifying the thought, this was what it took. Greater prices have been paid for the freedom to be human, to be as precious as any of god's children, but this was the price for Ellen, to spend four hungry, sleepless, terrifying days as some one else, as her exact opposite, a white slave-owning man. 

Imagination and Integrity

I typically don’t step in to the fray of current events here. There’s too much unknown, the landscape is too fluid and I hate to pitch my tent and then have the sands of what we know, what we can know, and how well we can know it shift and bury me. But this whole Rachel Dolezal thing is huge news here in Spokane. I watched it break quietly, reading the first reports on my Facebook feed Thursday night. I watched as it blossomed floridly all day until it became too tempting to not write about. 

Even with the shifting sands of the day’s news, I think I can solidly say that integrity is important to me. More important than any skin color. Honesty is hard and often requires vigilance and courage in the face of what we want and what people want from us.  I know we all fudge a little here and there. We try to keep a long story short, or we want to tell one part of the story but keep the other parts private.  And we all deceive ourselves. Maybe we accidentally twisted the story because we need the other person to be a villain or we really wanted what we wanted and only if we told ourselves that story in that way could we justify it. We are all currently deceiving ourselves in some way, even now, even as I type, trying so hard to keep the truth carved as close to the bone as possible. I fear this truth: that we lie to ourselves. I hate it. It’s a natural part of being human. But to say that we all lie to ourselves and therefore lying is okay, that’s where I disagree. And I have a really big problem with it when it all turns in to a colossal lie and intentional deception. At that point, I don’t feel the same softness for our human-ness as I do when it’s accidental. Perhaps I should, but I don’t. I have no idea where Rachel falls in this continuum of truth, but I do know that I have no time or energy for overt lies and the people who tell them. 

Here's my confession: I once passed as a Christian to take a room in a house very near the University. I didn’t lie. They knew my dad was a pastor and offered me the room based on my father’s occupation alone. I was new to town and I really needed a place to live so I did not correct them.

Here's where I stand up: When I had long dark hair, I often wore it in two braids. I thought it was cute and conveniently kept my hair from blowing in my face. When my hair was worn like this, and only when my hair was worn like this, people, always white people, (but obviously not ALL white people, Ha! That’d be just under 1 billion people. I imagine they would all stand in line and I would go from cradle to grave handling just that one question), would often ask me if I was Native American.

I grew up in the parsonages of Marietta Community Church, a stone’s throw from the town-ette of Marietta, on the lip of the Lummi Reservation. I had Lummi friends. I occasionally attended Lummi functions. But I’ve always found the wherewithal within me to chuckle and say to the inquiring minds, “Nope. I’m actually of Dutch heritage. It’s just the braids; they trick people every time.” I feel now I should specify that I am Dutch, except for 1/32 German, by about 10 feet across the border. But I’ve often said I was all Dutch. I’m sorry. It’s just seemed shorter than saying I was 31/32 Dutch and 1/32 German. And nobody seemed to care anyway.

I can see the temptation of saying I was Native American. I could easily get away with it and get all that exotic credit without the bother of being constantly hassled by stereotypes and racism, both overt cruelty and well-meaning pity.

I worked and attended college with my friend Denise, a black woman who grew up in Anchorage. We worked at the Farmer’s markets around Seattle, manning the Italian, rustic-bread booth together. Our liberal, open-minded customers often chatted her up while ignoring me. The farmer’s market demographic adored her, flirted with her, gave her gifts and invitations, loved her. I suspected it's because my white skin was so cliche, but I didn't say anything until she did. Then when they would leave, we would burst out laughing at them. “I’m so exotic!” She would tease and flaunt her exciting looking hair, maybe in braids or an afro.

She was a math major, a declared math major. She hated math, she told me, but as long as she kept one such class on her schedule, she could go to college as long as she wanted on fat scholarships. “Oh yeah. Black woman math major? Cha-ching! Donors go crazy for that shit.”

She wasn't the only one I knew doing it that way. An Asian friend always claimed to want to be a doctor on her scholarship applications. What kind of doctor? "Oh God no. I don't want to be a doctor at all. I just want my college paid for!"

Meanwhile, I choked along, putting myself through community college, working up to 40 hours a week while taking a full load. I transferred to a state university. I rode a city bus to school 1 ½ hours one way. I had no financial help from my family. I looked for scholarships for white girls studying liberal arts. I could not find any. I understand I have white privilege, just at times I wished it came with money.

I've read that Rachel attended a black college on full scholarships, the assumption being that she was black.

One black man I once had a crush on wouldn’t give me a second glance. I got to know his white friend and we had babies and got married. We hung out with this black man and his new girlfriend and after dinner one night, discussions commenced regarding my time living in Mexico, working as a sales clerk. “Wait! What?! You lived in Mexico? Where else have you been?” After more discussion, and a longish list, he said, “Oh man! I thought you’d just rolled out of the suburbs when I met you! Oh man!”

His white, wispy little girlfriend smiled knowingly at me, “I bet you get that all the time. I bet you’re sick of it!”

“You get that too?”

“Oh yeah.”

My roommate in that Christian house had a Native friend. My roommate coveted invitations to Native events and often talked of Native ideals. Her friend found it necessary to break the news that no matter how hard she tried, my roommate would never ever be Native American and to try to keep that in perspective. Another friend is part Native American and has struggled for acceptance by her tribe, a place where she feels more at home than any other. Racial identity is a tricky thing and deception does it no service.

I can see how passing as black or Native would be attractive. We white girls, a sprawling demographic, want in on a tighter community in America, a sisterhood, a clearer identity. And the farmer’s market clientele would have fawned over me. Scholarships might have materialized. If I wanted to do non-profit work, I wouldn’t just be another do-gooder white girl coming in to tell those flailing POC’s how to pick themselves up (a branding I’d heard another white girl get when she tried to get a teaching position at a Native school). In full disclosure, I’m certain I've said some well-meaning but totally stupid bullshit about race and I've heard other freckled white-girls say some pretty strange things too. Some of the stereotypes are based on some real issues. 

If I could pass as black in my liberal circles, I could imagine that my struggles would be respected, made real by my race. It wouldn’t be assumed that I had had an easy, simple, well-funded life. People would look at me and know I’d been through some shit, and that part of the assumption would be true. It would almost be closer to truth to than what they get when they judge me on my skin color and my hair. It’s silly to complain: #whitegirlproblems. I’m not denying my white privilege, but I want to talk about my experiences. Stereotypes cut both ways. 

We could say, hate the game, not the player. But it’s my job to be honest, and your job to not jump to conclusions, to not stereo-type me, dismiss me, or anyone else. I certainly don’t imagine we fresh-faced and enthusiastic white girls are oppressed enough to justify the sort of deception all available evidence points to being perpetrated by Rachel Dolezal. This whole thing is mind blowing, strange, and yet understandable, pitiable. It’s hard to get traction as just another flacid-haired white girl, especially in liberal circles already awash in such mundane complexions in this region. But I’m not 100% sure that her act is even that well-reasoned. I’m also aware of the possibility that her parents have an ax to grind, yet that doesn't mean she's telling the truth.

The Wantonly Ironic Blog Post

This is the last day of April and I haven't posted yet this month. I set it as a personal goal to post at least once a month and for most of the seven years I've been puttering on this blog, I've achieved at least that. But not this month, apparently, or not. Now that I'm telling you this, I'm stuck in a paradox loop.

The whole fam damily

In the beginning, I posted many times a month, and once I even posted more than once in a single day! They were short posts, more about keeping in contact with our old friends and our diaspora of families. Since then it's morphed in to more of an essay thing. Often, I omit the various details of our lives, the ones I might share with friends, ones like: I put my back out on the back porch on the first hot day of the year and I got stuck out there but I had my cell phone and called Huck who happily took the rest of the day off work to care for his can't-get-up wife. While I waited for him, I got too hot in my black velour pants so I scooched them off of me. This might have been obscene but I 1) live in the country and no one can see me, 2) Except for there turned out to be construction workers building a house on the lot next to ours and they had a perfect view, 3) My unders often offer more coverage than my bathing suite bottoms.That sounds very granny-panty vs. string bikini, which would send the wrong message, both ways. And finally number 4) I don't give a shit who sees what. But then, pants-less, my legs burnt to purple and are just now, two weeks later, beginning to peel.

My view on the porch: that's the underside of the lounge chair

Huck's former work with severe Cerebral Palsy patients meant that he knew just how to pick me up without hurting me, how to feed me tacos by turning my head to the side, and how to sit me on the toilet. After a few immobile days I was fine, if a little resentful of what two and half years of laying down recovering from my head injury has done to my core strength. So now I'm doing more core exercises. The delightful thing was that it was just my back that hurt, not my head. So I laid flat on my back in bed and played on my phone which only fell on my face a few times. It was Mahjong Solitaire for days, baby. Having a hurt back was not boring, not like having a head injury. I was annoyed that the gardening would have to wait, but otherwise, it was a delight, interrupted only by stabbing sensations in my lower back. My mind was able to play, read, sing, tolerate light, and talk. Piece of cake, a little crumbly but yum.

I also would have written something about our heating system breaking down and how we have to buy a new one. I will post pictures when we finally get it done. These photos will be en lieu of photos of us wearing clothes, the ones I might have purchased for me and my family and our pets during the next five decades. Instead of enjoying clothing and shoes and desserts and beer and electricity and gasoline, we will be paying off this machine that's the cost of a car but doesn't even have cup holders. It's okay that we won't be able to afford clothes because our 27 year old washer and dryer just broke too, so what clothes we were going to buy wouldn't have been clean anyway. It's okay that the dryer is broken because it's clothesline season. And it's okay that the washer fills up at a drip and takes 2-3 hours per load because that's the same rate the 20 year old water-heater fills at too. But no worries, we will have warm air, if not warm water, in our home. If we weren't paying the mortgage on the house, we'd be able to afford it's upkeep. Next time I buy a house, I will be paying attention to the age of the appliances. Oi Vey!

Oh well, that's life: impossible situations, inconvenience, trouble, nuisances and frustration. Life is suffering, as the Buddhists say, no matter what you decide to do. Life is other things too, but suffering is the part we're always squirming away from. I often look at children (and myself sometimes; I'm young yet) and pity the sheer volume of suffering they have in front of them --days, decades, centuries-- and the obnoxious process they will have to go through of acclimating to it, accepting it, and finally laughing languidly in it's face. Hahaha.

Party's over for the blossom carnival

I almost made my self-imposed monthly deadline. I started a blog post yesterday, but I keep having more and more ideas and things I want to write and now it's getting really long, way too long for this blog. I don't think you people can handle the 15 page essay, not here, not in the few minutes you have today. So I'll need to cut some things. I do this for free, out of my own need to connect and communicate and string together pretty (and sometimes ugly) words. I do it as honestly and as compassionately as I can figure out how to do. The words come easily but the cutting is hard. Although I'll do it as much as I can stand for you, my unknown readers. Thanks for reading, by the way. The verbiage of the internet is so absurdly copious that I am always happy that anyone picks a blog post of mine from this ocean of blather and takes a few highly coveted moments of their time to read what I've written. Thank you.

About you: You are anonymous. My blog has a statistics page which keeps you that way but also lets me know the general gist of my readership. I wish I knew more about you all, but the most they'll tell me, that I actually want to know, is search terms and country of search. Recently, someone found my blog through the unlikely Google search: "Sarajoy, your ass.my life." Ooh-kaaaay.

Also, I've discovered that if you are in Denmark and for some very disturbing "reason" you Google, "Cow Shit Porn," photos of me licking cow shit off a pitchfork will be at the top of your search. Obviously, looking back on it now, I can see how I would end up there. Back then, however, I was clueless about cow shit porn. Now that I've seen the Google search habits of the Danes, I can see how my silly photos would have landed me at the top. That was not the intended outcome. Oh crap, I just realized that every time I use the term "Cow Shit Porn," (Now CSP!) I create a stronger and stronger link from CSP! to me. This is not what I want! I am not CSP! No. No. No. If you are looking for CSP, this is NOT it! Please! Look away!

The spider I didn't see until I went inside and inspected the photos

That post, however, is obviously the most popular one, at least 15 times more viewed than any other post. The next most viewed is One Black Sex Link Ninja Chick, a harmless post about our baby chicks that happens to have a much-sought title.

Since it's been seven years, I am wondering about changing the name of my blog. "Sarajoy FRESH!" has gotten a little old and sounds like a cooking blog, which it really isn't. I'm thinking of "Dura Matters," but that might be too medically, TBI-y referential. And don't want to get stuck on this topic for the rest of my life. Because that's how it works, you name your blog and then you HAVE to talk about only that thing, FOREVER. ONLY. THAT. It's in the Blogspot marriage license.

"Dura Matters" also doesn't sound very perky or clever. Maybe "Dury Maties"? Or maybe something more sophomoric-ly sophisticated and un-spellable like "The Bureau of Recollections." Maybe I should rename it "Inutile Larrikin," a nutty phrase I put together just now using Google, which is about as much thought as I put in to the original title. But I'm not sure anyone would ever find my blog, or care to, if I named it that. Maybe I'll just refresh the name a tad to "SarajoyROTTEN!" But more likely, I will think about it for a long time, so long that I'll feel enough satisfaction from having day dreamed about it and I won't actually do it.


What do you think I should rename my blog? Or should I? "Let me know in the comments!" I finally wrote it! I may be a blogger for real now! And I really do want to know what you think! Unless you are my mother. If you are my mother, you are officially invited to stop telling me how much you "can't stand" my blog.

Driving Confessional

Last week, driving back from the kids' school (late, thanks Day Light Savings Cluster Fuck!), the orange sun rose in my glaring rear view mirror and I suddenly had the eerie sensation that I was Matthew Cuthbert driving his wagon to town the morning he picked up Anne from the train station. (Yes, all of life still relates to Anne of Green Gables, always has, always will.) I felt transported in time even as I was traveling at speeds unimagined by the imaginary Mr. Cuthbert. While making my zippy way to a zoomy on-ramp, I felt like an old man bumping along on a wooden wagon.

My kids attend a public school for gifted kids which is housed in an adorable old brick building in the worst part of town, to which we must drive them daily. This neighborhood now has signs posted around it: "Designated Area of High Prostitution Activity," and I've also heard it referred to as the "Prostitution Watch Zone," which makes me think I should bring a bag of popcorn. The official story is that it's part of a "crack" down on illicit commercial activity in an effort to "revitalize" this... um... business district. But I suspect that the signs were...ahem, erected, in response to the city's johns
complaining that they were having trouble locating "some" ever since the police shut down Spokane's thriving network of brothels. It seems more like an attempt to create a red light district, within which my kids go to school, rather than stifle one.

wasp home

One day, on my way to pick up the kids, I stopped for a woman who seemed to be trying to cross the street. Except instead she bee-lined for my passenger side door and while maintaining a talented level of eye contact. It was her giant shoulder bag that gave her away. I mouthed, "OOPS!" and sped off. The strange thing was that this woman looked exactly like me, same age, same hair, same body, same face. It was like looking in to a mirror, except for the bag. I would never have a bag like that. I spent weeks wondering how I got there, what choices, what events, what happened to me? Why did my situation require that I turn to the world's oldest business? What was the tipping point?

This school has also been locked down by SWAT raids on the houses and warehouses around it.

I have swerved around some interesting items on the roads near the school: 1) a very large, anatomically decorated black butt plug with a dangerous looking (but important safety feature) flange and 2) a white chicken that did not actually succeed in crossing the road, making every other chicken of every other joke sound not so much the butt of jokes, but more lucky duck survivors of a high risk venture.

Walking into the school, I have dodged used condoms on the sidewalk, and if you knew this school you'd know they're not from the kids.

And just last week a man in a truck blew through a stop sign near the school because he was... guess. Just guess. Just try. Nope. Nope. Nope. You better give up, you're never going to guess. He was shooting up!

Aspen flower

Almost all the time while I'm driving, anywhere, not just near their school, I'm thinking, "I could be killed (or possibly worse? maimed with piles of medical bills and a never ending stream of paperwork... okay, not worse but just by a soupcon) here. Or here. Or here." When I arrive at my destination, I am surprised. How was I not killed? How many things just went right? How was it that everyone was paying enough attention to not kill me? How did I travel that fast without any incident? How did I make all of those lane changes without running in to anyone in my blondspots or ramming anyone in front of me while I was checking my blondspots? (Officially I've sworn off all blond jokes as everyone but me in my family is blond, but that one was a typo and I am helpless in the face of blond typos.) I'm still alive and it's a goddam miracle!

I have an ancient phobia of cars and driving from two car accidents 13 years ago. A great therapist unraveled the phobia in only 8 weeks. But it still pops up now and again. This brain injury certainly resurrected it, what with my year of missing peripheral vision, the zooming visual cacophony, the quick decisions and always forgetting where I was going, plus the adrenaline dumps that happen as soon as I hit highway speeds. I'm not sure my resurfacing phobia is really a phobia, at least not an irrational one. Graphs like this (from Fear of Flying) freak me out. Sure, flying is safe, but look at the ROADS!!!!

Last week, I had shifted, slightly, from daydreaming about Mr. Cuthbert to day dreaming about this Day Light Savings Crapathon and how ruled by clocks we are and how twice a year we are annoyingly yet cleverly reminded of the glorious fact that numerical time is just a collective hallucination, a social construct we have more control over than we imagine.

Aspen flowers

I was now cruising down our offshoot highway at 60 mph when someone, probably sleep deprived because of the Day Light Savings Shitticane, pulled right in front of me, perpendicular, trying to cross to the other side of the highway. She slammed her brakes and I'm not entirely sure how I managed to swerve so fast. It's easy to imagine twenty different gruesome outcomes, or more, if you count the various ways body parts can land after flying through the air.

Aspen flowers

I did not get angry.

Sometimes I do get angry, with occasional bouts of admittedly pointless road rage. I don't typically feel insulted or challenged when cut-off or swerved at. I feel terrified. That's where my yelling comes from, fear for my life and for the lives of my children (attentively listening in the back seat), fear of bills and insurance companies, and fear of accidentally harming someone else and being put on trial for it. My intended audience can't hear a damn thing, but my unintended one in the back seat certainly does. But that's okay; It's important to teach children how to vent at clueless and/or self-absorbed drivers, right? They need to know what to say, how to say it. It's an important life skill. I learned it from my father, although he always included the withering insult, "Woman driver." And my children will learn it from me. Blue, precocious and creative always, created her own phrase when she was just three. "Fuck Ass!" she called out to another driver on my behalf.

When the kids are around I do try to come up with tamer insults and curses, usually involving penile appearance and function. You know, hit those jerks right where it counts. If your gonna drive like dick, then I hope it turns green with pink polkadots and sprouts a tutu before it rots off your body. Since my head injury, my curses have been shortened to "Privates go BAD!"

I also get road rage when people drive dysfunctionally too nice. These are the ones that wave every damn car through at the four way stop while I remain trapped behind them, polite to everyone but me. Once I sat through four stop lights as the person in front of me waved through 12 cars. Meanwhile my kids lingered outside their school, in THAT neighborhood, waiting for me to pick them up. And I yell at these people... or rather, I yell at my windshield, "You are the most sactimonious, self-righteous, clueless fucking moron! You pious pile of crapola!" Then I go all analytical: "You just want to look good, you just want recognition! That's why you don't have tinted windows! That's why you're only nice to people who can see your fucking face! Turn around and let ME get a good look your mug! Go jack-off your self-rightousness in your own driveway! Just take your turn! Ain't no brownie points in heaven for not taking it!"

Aspen flower

The other place where road rage sneaks in is with assumptions about the motivations of other drivers. The person who speeds up while I'm trying to time a tricky merge? "OH, I can't get in YOUR lane?! Really?! well this lane doesn't have your name on it, asshole! It's not like your mama paid for this lane from Seattle to St. Paul!" So I try my assumptions on the opposite way: they might be actually trying to make space for me, although it just screws up my timing. Or maybe they are in labor and headed to the hospital and don't give a shit about my merge. Or maybe they have a head injury and it's all they can do to stay inside the lines. I apparently need to be told a little bed time story about the actions of other drivers. 

And then there are the timid mergers who seem to need a bottle and diaper change and 400 car lengths, "What, do you need me to hold your fucking hand for this merge? I can only baby you for so long!"

A sticker knock-off of demi-god Calvin (of Calvin and Hobbes) pissing on anything can also be a trigger.

I can tell how serious the threat to my safety by how I feel afterward. Obviously the person crossing the highway made a serious and stupid mistake. It's a mistake that has killed many on Hwy 195, but I wasn't angry, I was simply grateful. I felt lucky, like a chicken who'd successfully crossed the road.

the flowers are resurrecting!

I've heard people say that who you are in your car, alone, isolated in your steel and glass bubble and yet still interacting with the world, is who you REALLY are. I object. Driving is a curious psychological scenario, certainly. It's like a physical version of the internet: no one knows you personally, yet you are interacting. There are driving trolls, of course. But I can't bring myself to believe that who you are at your worst is who you "really" are. When we are at our ickiest, it's not our truest self. I also don't think your Sunday Best is our truest self either. These are parts of ourselves, parts what we value, what we fear, what we hope.

Don't even pretend you don't experience flushes of frustration when you drive. That's just a pile right there. Maybe you don't express it exactly the way I do, but it's a crime to deny your humanity entirely. We cope with 1000's of random who-knows-who's on the daily and not one of them ever gets your goat?! Oh please.

Sunflower seed spring holdouts

I was recently dishing about this with someone who proclaimed that they NEVER get mad and certainly NEVER with kids in the car. What's wrong with me that I do? And then 20 minutes later the confessions started rolling out.

I've also known people who maintain a saintly public disposition, but while driving they shriek from start to finish. Everyone is evil and the only perfect driver on the road is them, never mind they're cussing someone out for a move they just pulled not 1/4 mile back.

Do I think it's wonderful? This silly ineffectual road rage? Obviously not. I'm not advocating for it. But my blog isn't about donning a wordy halo of sainthood. We've all got it somewhere inside. When we drive, or bike, or walk through city crowds, inevitably we'll cross paths with someone whose methods of motion disagree with us. And we get disagreeable.  It's enough to make me wish I really was an old man with a wagon. Although, I'm not sure there wasn't road rage back then too, more likely involving the horses than other drivers.