Taking A Stand: Traffic jam brings out worst behavior
What can turn every-day, normal people into nasty, crazed hot heads who act more like impatient 3-year-olds rather than supposedly mature adults?
I got the answer to this question as I exited the Sunday night Tennessee Titans game in Nashville. It was about an hour after the Titans’ big win and traffic was still bumper to bumper in the parking lot. Our parking space was located very near the stadium so we walked over to my car and it was immediately apparent there was stress in the air.
Just hours before, it had been like a Titans family love-in at the parking lot, with people tailgating, grilling out, throwing footballs and hanging out just prior to kickoff. Everybody was friends with everybody else, united for a common cause – the Titans.
However, how things can change in such a short time. The once-friendly crowd in the parking lot had turned into a post-game apoplectic mob, each trying to jockey and push for every inch for their clan. The togetherness of hours before had turned into an every man for himself contest, with bumpers hitting bumpers.
Being a veteran of parking lot snarls, I simply put away my gear and leaned up against my car to watch this human study in immaturity.
“Oh, I got my column for Wednesday,” I told editor James Clark who was standing there, shaking his head at the crazed motorists.
The first thing we saw was a car, immediately behind mine, which moved a total of two feet in 15 minutes. This guy was repeating beating on his steering wheel, I assume hoping his pounding would quicken the traffic in front of him. Then, two cars behind him there was some jerk with a horn fetish. This bozo would lay down his horn every few minutes in this gridlock, like it was going to mean something.
“Hey, we better move on, someone is blowing their horn a mile behind us,” the guy who was causing the traffic jam could be heard saying. Yeah, right.
Despite this total gridlock, there were numerous motorists trying every trick to get from their parking places, just so they could sit there and wait in a line which was not moving. Some would push their bumpers dangerously in front of the oncoming line to wedge their way in, almost in a battle of chicken with other motorists. There was one case where this passenger actually got out of his vehicle and stood in front of a car so his buddy could pull into the line, using his body as a roadblock daring the other guy to run him over. Of course, the motorist behind him laid down on his horn, shouting unsavory comments at him. In response, the human roadblock simply took another sip from his drink and pretended he didn’t hear the horn and the insults.
Still another guy, parked immediately next to me, tried the greener pastures theory, using his pick up to go off-road across a concrete median only to find the line in the next lot was just as gridlocked.
It was obvious folks weren’t seeing the big picture. Manners and courtesy were replaced by selfishness and anger. I’d really hate to see some of these folks if something really bad were to happen. Heck, I would have hated to see them if the Titans had lost, seeing they were crazed lunatics even though their team had won.
The best policy was to sit there and wait it out. Why waste your gas and make your blood pressure go up when you could simply sit there and watch grown adults make fools of themselves? And, the end result was that these impatient drivers probably got out of the parking lot all of two minutes before I did. Not much of a payoff for an hour of cursing, huh?
(Duane Sherrill is a reporter for the Standard. He can be reached at 473-2191 or by e-mail at [email protected].)