Note of the Living Deb

I guess all defensive driving instructors have their own strengths and missions. Today's most interesting material was on dealing with annoying things that happen while you're driving.

Catty-wampus parking

My instructor liked to tell stories. For example: Imagine you're in a very full parking lot. Finally you find a space. Sort of. One of the adjacent cars is parked crooked. You can still squeeze in by parking crooked yourself. You think about keying that guy's car. But you decide you're above that and don't do it.

Later, that guy leaves. A new person finds the space, but notes that you are parked crooked. They can just fit in, but they have to park crooked to do so. They think about keying your car. But then they decide they are above all that and don't do it.

This can go on all day long.

Lesson: You never know if that person who's parked crazy is the first person who parked like that.

Slow drivers

Sometimes someone's driving really amazingly slowly. As you pass, you look inside and see that it's some super old person.

But think about it. Do you really want all the ninety-five-year-olds driving fast? Maybe not.

And sometimes after pretty traumatic accidents, the people in them are afraid to drive fast for a while.

Lesson: Just let people drive the speed they are comfortable at.

Teaching people a lesson

You may tell yourself that when you shoot someone the bird or otherwise communicate negatively with a driver that you are teaching them a lesson and making the roads safer for everyone.

But you can't teach people a lesson on the road. Face it, you're really doing that because it feels good. It's actually safer to just let it go.

Shockingly bad behavior

Our expectations tend to be too high when we're driving. It will never be the case that everyone will use their blinkers, everyone will drive your idea of the ideal speed, no one will cut anyone off, etc.

Better to just accept that annoying things will happen. There's always another idiot. When you start feeling emotional, ask yourself why you're still shocked. It really should not be a big surprise.

When someone does cut you off, you might even think to yourself, "There you are. I was wondering where you were."

Teaching yourself a lesson

If you feel a rush when you cut someone off, there might be something wrong with you.

If you get cut off on a regular basis, or someone flips you the bird on a regular basis, you might be doing something wrong, or at least something rude. "Once every six months is a healthy amount." Heh. If it's happening more often than that, it might be something about you.

Our instructor actually avoids doing some things that he personally does not feel are wrong just because it's been made clear to him that other people don't like it and it's better to get along on the road. For example, when getting on the freeway and traffic is slow, he likes to wait until the last possible second to merge. But people in the slow lane feel he is taking unfair advantage of them, so now he merges much sooner than that.

How to play Extreme Tango:

1) Get a dance floor the size of my house.

2) Put at least ten couples on it (the more, the better, but just ten couples is enough). Do not allow them to leave the room.

3a) Teach them a step involving pivots and back cortes. Ideally they should wearing spiked heels for stomping while heading backwards where they can't see. And they should have some sort of pointy weapon on their elbows which they are sticking out to their sides as far as possible for slicing off the arms of the other couples as they spin around or at least stabbing them in the back.

3b) Or you could teach them the right turning fan, preferably with spiked heels, so they can walk backwards in two different directions during the times when they aren't slicing each other in the calf while spinning with one foot sticking out behind them.

**

That's reminding me of a game I really liked as a kid. Everybody gets two balloons. Tie one to each ankle so it sticks out the side and droops all the way to the ground. Go around trying to pop everyone else's balloons by stomping on them. Once both of your balloons are popped, you are out of the game. The last one with an unpopped balloon wins.

Well, I'm not totally sure I actually liked this game. I may have played only once and immediately gotten both my balloons popped. It is also possible that people will stomp on your feet, which can't be fun. But it always seemed like it should be fun. (Of course my current friends would hop around with one foot in the air or something, so we might end up with a multiple tie.)

Yesterday I was running for the bus and tripped and fell on the sidewalk. (I wasn't even roller skating. I wasn't even reading while walking.)

At the time, my hands and elbows stung. The breath was almost knocked out of me and I was feeling a bit headache-y and faint for a few minutes. Also I felt like an idiot. And my clothes got messy, though they somehow protected me and didn't get shredded themselves.

Today's evidence of my fall are a sore on my left elbow and an extra lumpiness I'm not used to on my right knee. With just a couple of band-aids to protect my left elbow, I was able to go dancing, even with someone who danced my elbow through curtains.

So, I'm still at an age where I can fall without crumpling my bones. I can just get up on go on with my life. Woo hoo!

**

Tomorrow we're off to Oklahoma for a week. Fortunately I found a web site that gave me a lot of ideas for things to do and so I feel pretty confident that it will be just like a real vacation. Certainly the weather will be nice. It's getting to where it barely hits 90 degrees here during the day, and we're going a few hundred miles north.

I don't have to warn you that updates will be sporadic at best because they already are!

Journal entry of the day - The Simple Dollar's Looking at Your Career as an Investment, which runs with Lewis Braham's idea in How Your Career Affects Your Portfolio from Business Week. They compare a career with investments to give them more ideas on how to control their finances. It's fun to look at things from a different perspective.

Today I got to go to a class on emergency training, marketed to people who have customer service positions, so they can better deal with threatening situations at the customer service desk.

Most of the class was not very helpful to me. For example, we were told that most assaults at jogging areas happen to people who are not paying attention. For example, some woman who was attacked recently was listening to music and had the earbuds in both ears, so she didn't hear anyone coming up behind her.

Sounds useful, except what would she had done if she had heard someone? She was already running away, right? She might have moved over to the right to get out of the way, assuming the person was trying to pass her. That's not going to help, is it? Or does she just not look like as a good of a victim because she's more likely to turn around and look at any moment?

So, mostly a lot of platitudes that I didn't find helpful. There was one good thing, though.

Have you heard about those psychology experiments where someone runs through the class yelling or something, and then everyone in the class is supposed to describe exactly what happened? Well, what happens is they tend to all get it wrong. Most of them in many, major ways.

On my way to the class, I was thinking they ought to do that, and that if they did, I would be ready and pay attention. See, if I wasn't ready, I wouldn't be paying attention, and I wouldn't remember a thing except things like, uh, it was a he, and he had clothes, and he had two legs.

They actually did the experiment!

First they passed out this survey for us to work on. Then I heard a guy exclaiming "I don't care what the ___ said, the ___ is mine!" I looked up and saw a guy in a shirt with a bold design in rust, black, and white and carrying a large off-white bag. Then I told myself to quit paying attention to the shirt and pay attention to something that was a little more helpful. I paid attention to his hair. It was grey, thick, kind of short, and a little wavy. Then he was gone. I then decided that he wasn't a really tall guy and that I would feel confident saying that he was under six feet tall. And he wasn't a really skinny guy. That was it.

So, even with preparing myself somewhat, I still would have been a pretty useless witness. Well, that's good to know, I guess. Or at least I wondered if I would be as bad as I thought.

We learned that for men, you should look at things that don't change, like height. And things that don't change without a lot of trouble, like weight and hair color and hair length. But also other things that generally don't change like glasses, watches and other jewelry, facial hair, and shoes. That's right. We were told that many men have just three pairs of shoes: one for church, one for work, and one casual pair. Interesting, eh?

Well, out of those things, I noticed hair color and I sort of noticed height and hair length. I did not know if he was wearing anything except for that shirt and no hat. He could have had shorts or pants. He could have been barefoot. At least I knew that I didn't know these things. Someone said he had shorts on and I thought that you might assume someone wearing a Hawaiian-type shirt like his was wearing shorts even if he wasn't.

I also knew that I hadn't seen where he came from, and I hadn't seen if he'd had the bag the whole time or took it, let alone where he took it from. And I didn't know the important words in his sentence, but I did feel like he was being defensive and trying to justify himself.

Then the guy came back in and we got to see how well we did. I was right about what I didn't know: He had grabbed some lady's purse--she was one row up and about five seats over. He had come in the door from the opposite side of the room. He had long pants and black shoes. He had glasses and a mustache. He looked Hispanic and/or extremely well tanned. I knew I didn't know these things.

What surprised me is how many things I thought I knew that I didn't really know. I was most confident about the hair, and I was completely right about that, except it turned out to be a little thinner than I remembered. It still could be described as thick, though, especially for a guy with grey hair, so I don't feel bad about that.

I felt the second most confident about the shirt. But his shirt did not have a bold pattern; it had a fine pattern. I would never have guessed it was the same shirt. And it was unbuttoned, with a white t-shirt underneath. I never would have guessed that.

The bag was not some big, full money bag, but a medium-sized or even smallish purse. And it was not some kind of cream canvas or muslin fabric, but a cream and tan vertically-striped fabric with tan leather (or leather-look) trim. I never in a million years would have guessed it was the same thing.

They didn't say how tall he was, but he looked taller standing there than he had running off. He might have been 5'10" but not 5'8". I think he was still under 6' tall, but not by much.

And he had said, "I don't care what the judge said, the purse is mine!"

Extremely crappy witness. Also, I really should write everything I do remember down, right away, because I forget it all instantly.