Raving About Vancouver Traffic

Matt O'Grady reflects on SUVs, anger, and a vein-popping Pathfinder driver in the Vancouver neighbourhood of Kits.

Today, as a raging steroid monkey in an SUV chased me for six blocks through the otherwise quiet streets of Kitsilano, I wondered about the efficacy of anger.

I used to be a big fan: when my Globe and Mail wasn’t on my doorstep at 6 a.m., I would call Customer Service and sternly remind them of their promised delivery time. If my Shaw Internet service cut out for hours on end, I’d threaten to move to Telus. And so on. And it wasn’t just poor customer service that would boil my blood. For many years I refused to shop at Safeway because of a labour conflict – in California – in which employees had been locked out by management. It seemed unjust: I protested by vowing never to set foot in a Safeway again.

But over the past few months, something has changed in me. I’m shopping at Safeway again. I don’t get uppity with the people at the Globe when they’re late. And as I drove through a two-way stop and nearly died at 7:50 a.m. this morning, the whole thing crystallized: it doesn’t matter. You can rage, you can yell, you can complain: you can’t change what’s just happened and, more to the point, you have negligible effect on what might happen in the future. I believe there’s a metaphor about urinating in the wind, and it’s a good one: it feels all manly when you do it, but the end result is disappointingly diluted.

I felt like telling the guy in the Pathfinder that he was urinating in the wind, but after peering through the rearview mirror, I thought better of it: I could see the reds of his eyes. His mouth was wider than the Fraser basin, and spewing as many toxins. This, I should explain, even though it was he who had bolted through the stop sign – and I who had the right-of-way. When I laid on my horn in protest, or shock, Mr. Pathfinder decided to follow me – dramatically squealing his tires, altering course and tailing my car for what seemed like 15 minutes (but was probably 50 seconds). Heaving forward and slamming on his brakes at each stop, his oversized bumper came within millimeters of my aged VW several times.

Eventually I shook the steroid monkey – at this point, several blocks from where he was originally heading – and made my way home. Mr. Pathfinder was likely late for work and still ripped with rage. And for that alone I am grateful. I may no longer believe that anger matters or complaining works – but as for the mystical powers of schadenfreude to brighten one’s day, I have no doubt.

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