The Traffic Outside is Frightful

Way back in 2001 when we bought our house, we made the purchase in the month of March, when Christmas is a fuzzy memory that seems like it will never occur again. However, we go past and a few other holiday hot spots to get home, and within a few months we were thinking our great location had a major drawback.

We have learned to bypass our exit and take the long way home to avoid the crazy drivers— the ones who are not even from South County. Every weeknight and late afternoon on Saturday, there is a long line of traffic begging for a turn to merge onto Interstate 55 south. I don’t know what’s at the end of that highway, but it must not have a Bath & Body Works. We’ve also learned that Black Friday, for us, is a day best spent on house projects that we can accomplish without daring to leave our neighborhood.

I honestly don’t get the madness. I have a larger-than-average family and my extended family is huge, plus we have a few people that we send packages to. We make Christmas candy and cookies and send out cards. There have been several years when we’ve traveled over the holidays.

So I’m pretty sure that I’m doing all the same crazy things everyone else is (though I admit that I only work part-time, but I wasn’t frustrated when I worked full-time either). Why does this list of tasks cause the average shopper to suddenly find ample use for their middle finger and an angry face?

A couple of years ago we drove to Houston for the college graduation of a dear friend, and we arrived home just a couple of days before Christmas. I had a few last-minute gifts to get, and I went over to the mall.

In the parking lot of Macy’s I made the deadly mistake of starting to pull out of a row, not realizing a very focused woman in a black SUV was zipping around at a high speed from the other direction. I slammed on the breaks to let this woman get on with her agenda, but instead she stopped to yell for a while, blocking me into my row. She looked like me. We even had matching cars. But apparently she was rabid.

It seems like in the name of making those close to us feel special at Christmas with gifts, we treat everyone we don’t know like they must be employed by the Grinch, in which their sole purpose for existence is to slow us down.

I have my moments, too. Sometimes when a car takes the parking spot I was aiming for right by the store entrance, I am ticked to see one person hop out, while I am eight months pregnant with three little ones in the backseat. I am totally ready to ignore the multiple reasons why this type of self-righteous, self-absorbed thinking is silly. It’s not my favorite part of my personality.

One thing that keeps me from yelling or honking when someone doesn’t obey my personal rules of traffic etiquette at Christmas is that it really is a small world. The area is crawling with my family members and the thought of that anonymous driver turning out to be my niece or a friend from church makes me much more willing to let it go. We all do stupid things anyway, and I’m pretty sure I do more stupid things than most.

There are also people in my life who show me how to take things the other direction. My sister Linda lives two blocks from me and we love to go shopping together. One night when we were wandering aimlessly around the mall talking, she bought a package of fancy chocolates at a department store, only to open them right up and offer one to the cashier. It was so simple, but it never would have occurred to me to do that.

I think this kind of example is there because there are no strangers in her world, only friends. It’s one of many ways I’d like to be more like her, especially at Christmas.