Life Through One Eye

If you drive a lot, there will be instances where you find yourself too lost in thought, and while your physical body is operating heavy machinery in the waking life, your mind is in Istanbul, wondering what it was like growing up as a young boy in the 1800s. You are there, standing on the plains of the Anatolian Plateau, and as a young boy you are wearing a nice pair of slacks, when your thoughts suddenly get jerked away from you when you realize you have missed your exit.

Before pocket robots with GPS, if I missed my exit, it was over for me. I would now be traveling toward a new life, lost, and ready to start anew wherever I ended up. Now, that excuse of getting lost is no longer valid. Now it is a choice to just keep driving, ignoring all the robots with British accents telling you where to go and taking random roads to unknown places, never again to be seen by anyone you know.

So sometimes, if, say, you are driving to work and missing your exit would mean adding another fifteen to twenty minutes, depending on traffic and how complicated it is to return to your designated path, you may make a dodgy move.

This is how I found myself accidentally cutting off a small black car that looked like an exotic jungle beetle. The most difficult bug to squish is the ironclad beetle, some diabolical insect that can withstand 39,000 times its body weight. This car also possessed such a spirit.

Whenever I have been rude, I close one eye. Not in a wink, but just closed, as if I were shamefully trying to hide under a blanket, but also peek out to see what has happened from my error in etiquette. For example, when I absentmindedly had my headphones in and ordered a coffee without taking them off. Once I glitched out of autopilot and realized I was being rude, I hastily cleared my ears and apologized, but with one eye closed.

“I am so sorry, that was so rude,” I tell the miserable airport barista, looking at her cowardly through one eye, the headphones now out of my ears and blasting into the world. “I am hearing the name Walter… Luinda… Keesha…” while she looks down at my phone and sees I was listening to a tarot card reading on YouTube.

Immediately after realizing I did not see them in my mirrors and I had just cut someone off, I knew. I knew. This was the end of my life. This was the moment you look back on and think, if only I had spent that twenty minutes trying to find my way back instead of trying to save time. Safety is never a mistake. Let that be the message on all bumper stickers instead of those stickers of Tesla owners trying to denounce Elon Musk, now that they have realized he is Satan and they are nothing but cogs in hell, surrendering their hard-earned money to a plasticy psychopath.

“I am sorry!” I yell, alone in my car, one eye closed and looking in the rearview mirror. I can feel their anger. The energy in the universe has changed. It is now hanis, and directed at me.

The little beetle is now tailing me. Wherever it had to go, I changed the course of its day. Now the only thing that mattered was letting me know what a huge asshole I am. They followed me halfway to the airport just to give me the finger. Not even pull a gun out and end my life, just cut me off, unroll their window, eject their hand, and raise their middle finger at me, who, if they had had more courage and somehow looked me in the eye while doing it, would have realized I was looking back at them with one eye closed.

This collision of existences is like a pause in a movie. I entered their multiverse and caused chaos and disruption. And isolated, alone in your car, there is no hope for resolution or understanding. Unless you want to somehow roll down your window, drive up next to them, and try to explain about being a little boy in Istanbul. You were heading the wrong way. You are very sorry. You meant no harm, but you realize you caused it anyway, and this incident will be filed away in your self-loathing library and will be referenced at 3 a.m. for at least four weeks, and probably randomly again five years from now.

But that would require a lot. A lot more than if you had just traveled off the freeway and added twenty minutes to your work commute.

This would be a fantastic example if I were teaching a drivers ed class. When Noah is learning to drive, I will print this out and give it to him. This is the beauty of having children. I fucked this up entirely, but I know why, and I am going to tell you, so you can be spared fucking it up this way and be free to fuck it up your own way. In which case, I will still love you. Life is impossible to not fuck up sometimes.

As the beetle finally drove away, I had a lot of different thoughts and feelings.

All that to give me the finger? They need therapy.

My life was almost taken from me, and I do not have a will. I need to make a will and get all my death arrangements in order.

What if they had a gun? That would be scary.

Can they take my license plate number, report me to the police, and one morning cops show up at my door?

If I did go to jail, would they let me have a notebook so I could write about the experience? That would be a great book.

I bet if we got out of our cars, I would be able to kill them.

I bet if we got out of our cars, I would be able to explain and come to an understanding so powerful we both would apologize to one another and maybe exchange numbers and become friends.

How romantic would it be if we had gotten out of our cars and it was how I met my soulmate?

I hope they are not my soulmate. They seem to have intense anger issues, foreshadowing a toxic relationship for sure. For SURE.

Afterward, safely in the airports employee parking lot, I sat in silence, just staring. I was thinking about Jesus, and what kind of driver he would be. Probably slow and safe, but maybe not. If he had been able to drive away in a car, would he have escaped crucifixion? We will never know. Would that be a good movie premise?

I was starting to slip into a negative mindset.

Each day, the world offers you two doors you can open. One is where everything is bad and out to get you, like the tiny unhinged beetle. The other is the opposite of that. Even though my mistake opened one door, it did not mean I had to walk through it. In my head, I closed it.

I am sorry, I told the middle finger in the beetle, and I hope the message somehow got to them.

Then I opened the other door and walked through.

Once through that door, I witnessed a young man offer up his seat to an elderly man on the bus, something I never witness, and it actually shocked me in the best way. I saw more passengers on the bus thank the driver before exiting than those that just got off in a hurry. I saw a girl holding flowers at an arrivals gate. I saw what looked like her mom enter baggage claim, and I saw them embrace, and they both really held onto one another. I, just a stranger passing by, felt the love, and it made me feel happy.

I saw a flight attendant hold the elevator for an employee who works at the Panda Express in Terminal 2. I cleaned all the stores glass counters and mirrors, and Rosie, who usually cleans them, smiled at me so big I could see her silver back tooth and, before she left, she gave me a hug. I hugged her back, remembering the mom and daughter at baggage claim.

I spent the rest of the day with both eyes wide open.