I’m in a good mood today, and I have heavy traffic to thank for it.
I know that’s a crazy thing to say, unless you’re an ambulance-chasing lawyer or a psychiatrist who sees dollar signs in other people’s misery. But I’m neither of those things, so go ahead — call me crazy.
Still, it was the rush-hour slow-down at a four-way stop sign that brought a smile of contentment to my face.
Like everybody else on the road, I had someplace else I would rather have been. Like everybody else on the road, I would have preferred to be the only driver on a road without stops or slow-downs of any sort.
And, like everybody else on the road, I had plenty of reasons to be in a grumpy mood.
You know what I’m talking about: Charges at the gas pump that cost more than you paid for your first car. Newspaper and TV headlines that remind you of all the ways — from weather to weapons — that you count yourself lucky just to wake up each morning. Deluded fellow citizens who insist that their “facts” are more true than actual facts that stand up to proof beyond a shadow of any reasonable doubt.
Yes, all these things are reason enough to render any sensible person surly. And lately, it seems like Surly is America’s middle name.
So that’s why it was a surprise to me that a four-way stop sign put me in a good mood.
There were three or four cars in front of me that had to stop before going through the intersection, and each of the other three stop signs had an equal number of cars putting up with the same wait. In all, the sign might have added a minute or so to my drive. It was a minute spent standing still, watching what my fellow Americans would do with the disruption in their day.
And what I saw them do with their disruption brought a smile to my face.
Because what they did — simply — was behave decently.
Each driver pulled up to the stop sign after waiting a minute or so just to get there, and then took a few seconds more to glance around to see whose turn it was to go through next.
There’s a rule of the road that states that the person on the right has the right-of-way whenever two cars meet at a stop sign. I don’t think it’s a law — you probably wouldn’t get a ticket if you went out of turn. It’s just a common courtesy to make those kinds of decisions easier.
And of the dozen or so cars that I saw stopped at that stop sign, every single driver had the courtesy to play fair.
Every one of my fellow stop-sign citizens had someplace better to be. Every one of my fellow stop-sign citizens had plenty of reasons to feel grumpy and surly.
And yet, every one of my fellow stop-sign citizens took a minute-long break from their own busy obsession with their own lives to recognize that the folks in the other cars also had feelings that mattered.
My fellow stop-sign citizens were an interesting mix of Americans. There were a lot of things that would have provided an easy wedge between us—race, gender, age, cost of car or clothes. If you were inclined in that direction, it would be easy to tell at a glance who was one of “your kind” and who was one of “them.”
And yet, to a person, every one of those very different people sacrificed a few seconds by nodding to the next person whose turn it was to drive through the intersection.
You see it all the time if you stop to pay attention: the stranger who holds the door for you when your arms are full, or who stops to give directions when you are lost, or who blesses you when you sneeze. These are the common courtesies that make a mob into a civilization.
We notice the exceptions — the rude, selfish incivilities — precisely because they are exceptions. We dwell on them. We let them ruin our day and turn us surly.
But those other actions — those kind, caring gestures offered by folks who have nothing to gain by them — those actions are so common in America that we take them for granted. We don’t notice them because we expect them of each other. And of ourselves.
When my turn at the stop sign came, I drove on with a smile on my face because I realized that despite all the good reasons we have to be surly about life in America, we have a lot more to smile about.
It took a stop sign to remind me that we live in a land where most people are still pretty darn nice to each other.
It doesn’t have to be that way.
It isn’t that way everywhere in the world.
I know. I’ve been to Paris.
TR Kerth is the author of the book “Revenge of the Sardines.” Contact him at trkerth@yahoo.com.
