When an argument of any kind breaks out it seems only natural that there be a third-party. Another human life who can give that third-party perspective, to try to keep the whole situation as “fair” as possible.  Seems like a fool-proof plan to keep both sides of the argument in line, and under control right?

WRONG!

The middle man is probably one of the most unfair, and uncomfortable positions you can ever put a person in, especially if said “Middle Man” is friends with both parties involved! It’s a set up to take sides so no matter how you spin it, shake it, toss it or whatever you want to do with it, you’re going to end up doing one of three things.

1). You’re going to offend one of the people who forced you into the argument.

2). You’re going to offend BOTH of the people who forced you into the argument .

3). You’re going to be no help whatsoever, and make the entire situation WAY worse than it already was to start out with.

Seems like the simple solution would be to quit putting people in that awkward position of having to choose sides, and throw in their two cents about your stupid, idiotic, unimportant, and personal debate. But, of course, we as humans don’t think that way, oh no! There (seemingly) must ALWAYS be that someone who people can rely on to “have their back.” Well, I’m going to give you some advice that could quite possibly save a whole ton of hoopla for all those “Middle Men” out there.

Are you ready for it? Okay, here it comes…..

DEAL WITH YOUR OWN ARGUMENTS!

There it is, I said it. You started it, you finish it. You can’t always rely on another person to take your side! why? Because 99.9% of the time, the person who you so forcefully added to your little debate does not give two flying flips of a McDonalds McDouble about what your little argument is even about! So why in the world would you even begin to be the least bit offended with the opinion of the person who was forced to GIVE their opinion in the first place?

My guess? It is because most of the time, the opinion given from the third-party or “Middle Man” is generally going to be the most straight forward, and honest answer you’re going to receive. It, by default becomes their job, starting from the time you forced them into your business, to observe, and see both sides equally, and to create common ground for both parties to put their differences to rest. So what happens? their views end up getting shot to the ground — generally by both parties, because they didn’t magically agree with 100% of either party.

In conclusion, I would just like to say this: Cut the middle man some slack as you brought that person in to the argument in the first place! Show some dang appreciation to those who have to sit there and listen to some debate that they didn’t even start, are not at all involved in, and are now obligated to finish. You’re NOT going to win every single one of your arguments. If you feel the need to have a “Middle man,” then listen to whatever it is they have to say. Be open to the advice they give — YOU ASKED FOR IT!

-Venus

No kidding, there I was, sitting in the club meeting going over the events of the past few years and trying to come up with an official history of the group. Somebody came up with the idea that we should make a commemorative gesture to those people who were the first to achieve a goal commonly held by the club members.  Maybe that would encourage diversity in our efforts and give  little competitive motivation for people to try harder to achieve something.

One of the members objected. Quite firmly. She absolutely hated the idea of giving a “first to do X” recognition. It’s not that she objected to them succeeding. Oh no, that was very commendable. Her problem was that, once you become the first person to do something, nobody else can ever be the first to do it. She felt it promoted a feeling of exclusion and inferiority by recognizing someone as better than everyone else.

After about half an hour, we just started ignoring her. I mean, really how can you make headway against that kind of belief?

That was the first time I realized what a powerful investment many people have in their own failure, and the equal investment they have in making sure no one else succeeds.

The analogy goes like this : I am a small fish in a big pond. I don’t like that. I could move to a smaller pond. Then I’d be big by comparison. But I don’t like small ponds because they’re too small and I won’t know any of the other fish and I’d be lonely. I could try to become a big fish, but that’s a lot of work and I’m not really sure how to do that anyway. Plus, I don’t really know what it is that big fish do so, if I succeed, I’d feel stupid when I’m around all the other big fish. And there’s a lot of big fish. Bigger is better, everybody knows that. That means smaller is worse. Inferior. Substandard. Worthless. Being smaller than other fish makes me feel really sad. What to do, what to do…

I KNOW! If I try to make all the other fish smaller, then we’d all be the same size, I wouldn’t have to work as hard, I’d still be in a big pond, and everyone will be happy! Wow, I’m so smart! Time to start tearing down all the other fish for their own good.

If you look, you can see this same thought process in every form of daily life. Schools make sure they cater to the lowest-performing children, causing the better-performing children to falter and begin to under-perform from a lack of support. Grading on a curve is a fine example.

The children themselves do this. Who’s considered superior in playground politics, the nerd or the jock? Who gets the majority of peer abuse, the one who over-achieves or the one who under-achieves?

But Wait! you say, The captain of the football team is successful and we don’t try to tear him down!

Sure. That’s because he’s only going to be the team super-star until he graduates in a year or two. Then he’ll be just another Average Joe. We can cut him some slack because his glory is fleeting. But the nerd will always be smart. Unforgivable.

There was a guy I knew who worked at a salvage yard. Nice guy. A little nutty, but nice. We knew each other for a couple of years and always got along great. One day I happily said that  the money I was getting for the scrap I had brought in would be enough to pay for a nice graduation dinner in the following week.

“What, your GED graduation?” he asked.

“No, college graduation.”

Suddenly, he wasn’t my friend anymore. By going to college, I was trying to be better than him, and that was intolerable. I was evil. And educated. Evil and smart. It could only be worse if I was rich… which I must be because I was graduating college. Poor people  might go but only rich people finish, everybody knows that. Ignore the fact that I’d been collecting cans off the roadside and whatever other scrap I could find to pay the bills. Let not facts get in the way of drama.

Look at movies, TV, books, and so on. Who are the villains and who are the heroes? The villains are almost always smart, self-reliant, successful, and wealthy enough to afford their own Fortress of Doom. The heroes are the tattered underdogs who have to get by on courage, stubbornness, luck, and lots of aspirin and band-aids. You get the occasional gutter-level villain, but they never last except as goons to upper-management.

Seriously, who is more popular, Spider-Man or Iron Man? The hand-to-mouth poor kid with a radioactive infection or the billionaire playboy in a fancy suit.

But Wait! you say, Batman is rich AND popular!

Yeah, and Batman is critically afflicted with multiple mental disorders. He is such a tragic figure we can forgive him for being a billionaire. Besides, he inherited it. It’s not like he did anything to earn it.

Personally, I think it’s King George’s fault. As a British colony we were populated with a lot of people who came to America because their lives in Britain stunk. Sure, there were the wealthy landowners and industrialists (by the definition of the time), but these were in the minority. If you wanted to see nobility, aristocracy, and royalty, you had to go to England. Then came the revolution and England became the enemy. So did the royals, nobles, and aristocrats. To be a plucky farmer carving a life out of the wilderness was a good thing. To be wealthy and powerful old-world nobility was a bad thing. It make you a tyrant. Tyranny is un-American, therefore success is un-American.

We are often proclaimed as the richest and most powerful country in the world, and we take great pride in that. (Actually, America is the 10th richest by most standards, but let not facts get in the way of drama.) So  think of what must it do the ego of so many people who adopt the “make all fish smaller” philosophy to know that they have invested themselves so heavily into their own failure yet live in a nation that has been so successful. It must be absolute torture. But American success is what caused the philosophy to form in the first place? Maybe winning the Cold War was the straw that broke the camel’s back? I dunno. Maybe it’s just coincidence.

Shout out, all those who believe coincidence occurs on a national or global level? Are those crickets I hear?

I’ve been driving for over 20 years.  During this time I’ve driven through major cities in California, Washington, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Alabama, Florida, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Wisconsin, and I’ve been a passenger in vehicles in Virginia, Hawaii, and New York City.   The only reason I relay this information is in order to show I do have a good deal of experience on this topic.

So I’ve seen a lot of drivers, and driven a lot of places.  I have to say that by far the most polite drivers I’ve ever had the privilege of sharing the road with were in Seattle, WA.  They abide by the speed limit, they signal before changing lanes, they slow down in wet weather to accommodate poor driving conditions, and most importantly of all, they slow down when you signal so you can change lanes!  I even saw a traffic accident that happened right in front of me, and people immediately began slowing down and driving around the cars involved.

So if anybody from Seattle, WA is reading this, Thank You for being a courteous driver!

I’m sure the rest of us either remember or at least know about a little cartoon featuring Goofy called “Motor Mania” way back from 1950.  If you don’t know it, please, watch it.

I’ll wait.

(You know you want to watch it.)

… (6 minutes 39 seconds later) …

Welcome back.

Now that we’re all on the same page, I think it’s safe to assume that most of us, myself included, have been “Mr. (or Ms.) Wheeler”  at one point in time or another.

However in every other major city I’ve driven in, through, and around, I usually wind up sharing the road with Mr.-freaking-Wheeler.  And I don’t know why.  It doesn’t make sense.  Just doing the math about how many drivers occupying the road that have at least 5 years of driving experience you’d think that the majority of drivers are not novices.  Yet that’s how they behave.

So what is the “gottabefirst syndrome?” It’s the mental disorder that affects all drivers who allow their reasoning skills to be overrun by their desire to be the first driver … to reach the next stop light.

And THAT is what bothers me so much about them.  They are more than willing to be reckless drivers making poor choices and endangering everyone on the road around them simply so they can be the first one to reach the next stop light, sign, yield sign, traffic jam.  Trust me.  I know.  I’ve done it.

I know what it’s like to “just be in a hurry,” or “he cut me off, so I have to teach him a lesson,” or “I’m late for work, again!”

Regardless of your reason, TRUST ME, it’s NOT worth it!

Through personal experience I’ve learned that when you are more courteous to other drivers, and treat them as you would want to be treated, 9 times out of 10 you get cut off, flipped off, or even driven off the road!  People seriously lose their minds when they get behind the wheel of a car, and suddenly nothing in the world matters except their desire to get where they are going; anyone who gets in their way be DAMNED!!!

WHY has this become the norm in how we treat each other while on the road?  Why does it seem that reaching our destinations, and doing so in short order, has become critically more important than preserving the private property, sanity, and most importantly the LIVES of everyone with whom we are sharing the road?!?

In the city where I grew up you had to be VERY aggressive in order to just use the on-ramp to the highway.  In fact all your driving in my hometown needed to be more aggressive in order to just make it from point A to point B.  If you put on your blinker, you know you’re going to have to speed up and take that slowly opening spot, otherwise the cars behind you will see your blinker and speed up in order to get in front of you.

I used to drive a little four cylinder car, and was accelerating as fast as it would allow me from the access ramp to the highway, and an 18 wheeler in that first lane refused to slow down, regardless of the 15-20 car lengths between us, and forced me onto the shoulder so I wouldn’t get hit.

Or the numerous times driving from the access ramp to the highway when you have your blinker on, and the jerks behind you speed up, cut you off to get in front of you, just to make the very next off ramp!  All which could have been avoided, if they had just used a little common sense, slowed down, let you in, then they could calmly take the exit ramp.

Where I grew up, I learned it was necessary to be an appropriately aggressive AND defensive driver, in order to deal with the other inconsiderate  drivers on the road.  You can count on everyone on the road to be aggressive, so you can easily predict what they’re going to do and you drive in response accordingly.

Where I live now…is even worse.  It’s still a relatively large city, but at least where I grew up you knew drivers were aggressive, and predictably so.  But here, they’re not… But sometimes they are.  And sometimes they give mixed signals…literally.

Pop quiz on rules of the road:

If two cars simultaneously approach an intersection  with a 4 way stop, and the cars are perpendicular to each other, who has the right of way?

Answer: The car to the right.

I have already lost count of the number of times, that I was the car on the left.  I attempted to give way, and the car to the right waves me on.  And after several awkward seconds of me waiting for them to move through the intersection they wave me on to proceed.  After they wave me on, they begin accelerating to a point where if I had not reacted by accelerating even more  quickly, they would have hit me in the middle of the intersection!  I can’t help but think, “What is wrong with these people?!?”

And this doesn’t happen every time; the truly frustrating part about all this is that nobody is consistent.  You can never predict what the other drivers are going to do.  Sometimes they are polite, sometimes they cut across 4 lanes of traffic to make their exit; you just never know!

Back to my original point, we have standard rules of the road.  We have speed limits.  We have traffic lights, signs, and a plethora of information to make driving a more or less safe activity.  But when we ignore that critical information around us, because we’re too busy texting, updating status’ on social media, and we combine that lack of situational awareness and find ourselves speeding, then we have just mentioned the TOP TWO reasons for  accidents.

Distracted driving, and speeding.

“But what about drunk driving? Isn’t that the top cause of accidents?”

Nope…it’s number three.

Number 4, reckless driving.

It’s not until we get to number 5 that we start getting reasons that are beyond the control of the driver.  The 5th top reason for accidents is rain.

Which brings me to my next story.

I was driving home from work one day, and it was pouring, cats and dogs.  Sheets of rain were coming down.  I was in the fast lane, the speed limit was 65, and I was only doing 40.  I was passing other cars, but I felt safe doing it.  Enter reasons 2, 4, and 5 for the top causes of accidents.  This massive 4X4 was flying down the road, coming up from behind FAST.  He was definitely exceeding the speed limit (#2), driving extremely recklessly (#4), AND it was raining (#5).  While I was in the process of thinking, “This guy is literally going to kill me,” he swerved unnecessarily around me, getting into the lane to my immediate right.  (This is an 8 lane, divided highway, again I’m in the far left lane.)  So I let off the accelerator as he passed me on the right, and am VERY glad I did so, as he cut me off as he returned to the far left lane.  But in doing so, he fishtailed, as I was still slowing down, and he over-corrected from the shoulder lane, consequently slamming into the tail end of the car that was in front of me, which was approximately 10 car lengths away, as I was keeping ample distance from all the cars in front of me, due to the rain.   Both cars began spinning across the remaining 3 lanes of traffic to the right, and the impacted car ended up in the ditch, the offending truck hit a street sign.

I stopped on the left shoulder to call 9-1-1.  I stayed there until emergency crews showed up, and gave my report to the police, since I figured I was the primary witness.  The only reason I did not get out to attempt to render aid, is because immediately after the accident, the flow of traffic continued flowing as normal.  It wasn’t safe for me to cross 4 lanes of traffic on foot, in the torrential downpour.  When the police showed up and asked if I was involved, I told them I just wanted to give a statement, and he told me to meet him at the nearest gas station.  When I met him there he told me both parties were transported to the hospital via ambulance.

What I’m getting at is that the top four causes for accidents are all driver induced, preventable, and selfish reasons!

The next time you get into a car, think about others.  Think about safety.  Your text message can wait.  Your meeting may start without you, but at least you’ll be alive to attend it.  And for the love of all that is good and holy, call a freaking cab, uber, lyft, or designated driver! Do NOT think you are safe to drive a car if you have consumed more than one drink of alcohol per hour.

Don’t be a victim of “Gottabefirst Syndrome.”  It’s 100% preventable, because it’s a choice. The top 4 causes of accidents are because of selfishness.  Be a part of the solution by choosing how you drive.  We can lower these stats by making a simple choice.

Drive safely.

-Joseph Forefathers.