Shut the F*ck up While I’m Driving.
A guide to being a passenger in my car.
Consider this a gag order on all of you floor stompers, handle-grabbers and shoulder tappers. Your day of reckoning has come, and it’s time to finally shut your word holes while you’re in the passenger seat.
You’re not driving for a reason: you are driven by fear, and so you drive fearfully. The space that exists between individual uses of the brake and the gas pedal is a mystery to you. You spend every moment in your vehicle nervously stomping your operational pedals like they are the trigger to an ejection seat.
Simply put, you drive like dog shit. And since you drive like canine fecal droppings, you have no authority in my car.
I’m often put into situations where I take upon my throne to skillfully lead my axled kingdom to it’s destination while a friend, family member or colleague is blessed with the opportunity to observe my work. Please, sit quietly, and wallow in the wonder of an expert amidst his craft.
I am a great driver. So skilled, in fact, that I am perfectly comfortable weaving around the twenty-five turd smugglers lined up in a single turn lane, oblivious to the two unoccupied turn lanes waiting to be used on their right-hand side.
Unoccupied turn lanes are unoccupied because they are reserved for members of society who know how to operate a piece of driving machinery without terror-pissing their jeans.
If you happen to come into the graces of my vehicle as a passenger, I expect you to seal your lips while I’m busy painting navigational masterpieces.
Acceleration is my aestheticism.
Cornering is my conceptualism.
Braking, my baroque.
My vehicular domain is no place for your nervous bleating about lane changes and blind spots. Although you see brake lights ahead, I’ve already spotted an opening.
There is no reason for you to desperately grasp for the emergency handle with every pass through an exit ramp.
The only time you will need that handle is when I warn you to hold onto your tits while I execute an act of space age vehicular maneuvering which results in the successful beat down of a yellow light.
I don’t just beat yellow lights. I assault them. I drag their broken, barely living, tortured remains to the doorsteps of their families as a sign of my fortitude. There I will finish the job in front of their horrified expressions. I relish in the mournful tears of their kin.
You fail to recognize the inherent value of the time you waste. Time speeds past you during your prayers for a 240 second break in oncoming cars so that you can comfortably creep onto an ancillary boulevard.
Meanwhile, I understand the sophisticated dynamics — written and unwritten — of roadway use. Because I understand these dynamics so well, I am better able to manipulate them to my advantage. When I drive, we will arrive an average of seven minutes sooner because of this skill.
All of this is to say, while you are a passenger in my workshop, don’t distract me with your reverence. Every comment, complaint, plead and meek questioning is a distraction.
Would you tap Mozart on the shoulder in the middle of a composition? Would you beg General George Washington of the Continental Army to slow his pace so that he might put your feeble mind at ease?
Why should there be a democracy of driving? I am the lord of this journey; you, my serf.
You’ve already failed in becoming an adequate motorist, so do not adopt this trend into your role as passenger in my domain. Think before you squeak. Consider the distractions you create.
Because we are operating at the thresholds of Newtonian Physics and modern automotive technology, there is no room for a split in my attention.
Understand, you remove valuable focus from my mission on the road when you selfishly demand attention be directed toward consoling your fears. Get in. Buckle up. Shut up, and enjoy the ride.
