Saying Sorry

On the way to go swimming last night we were nearly in an accident. (I remember from a very real accident a few years ago that police never say accident, they say “crash”.) It wasn’t too scary – no one was going that fast, not us tooling down the street a few feet from a traffic light, and not the car full of kids who pulled right into our path from the grocery store parking lot. Lefty braked and swerved and the other car stopped short and this is the amazing part – the driver of the other car looked up and said “I’m sorry” to me through the passenger window.

No one in San Antonio has ever said I’m sorry for any traffic related behavior – and I have been on the receiving end of some very aggressive driving. In fact, when we first moved here I was terrified of driving on the various high-speed loops and interstates that everyone else uses to get from one side of town to another. I can get almost anywhere in the city using back roads and a few major midsized streets.

I did eventually train myself to drive on the interstate without too much freaking out. The hardest part is not letting the jaw grinding speed and angst of your fellow drivers rub off on you. I try to drive peacefully. I try to be Zen driver on 410. Come on in, there’s room for everyone on the interstate, I say to nervous folks on the ramp trying desperately to squeeze into traffic. If we each let one other person in, wouldn’t that solve a lot of these merge headaches?

Lefty prescribes to a similar theory. He always lets someone in, unless they’re driving a much nicer car than ours. He just loves to let old rusty Volvos into traffic, but if you’re driving a new Lexus, forget it.

Having to drive almost everywhere is one of the things we don’t love about San Antonio, but we have learned to take it in stride. I try to drive with my sense of humor riding shotgun, and if I make a mistake, I try to remember to say I’m sorry.