To the Woman Who Flipped Me Off: I Reframe You
Ah yes, flying the bird, as the Shepherd family household calls it. Something that I think perhaps all of us have done on occasion. For me, I have a strict internal code to never fly the bird unless in jest. Does it mean I haven’t flown a cheeky one where I think another driver won’t see? Not at all. But what happened yesterday was the 3rd thing that crossed my mind when I woke up this morning, right after “my feet are cold” and “I wonder what time it is?”.
Heading downtown for some errands, we had to stop in traffic for about 5 minutes just outside of Kentville as they are doing some major construction to the main bridge in and out and have been doing so for months. In the last month, it has consistently led to 5+ minute wait times to get through. My partner Adam was driving and we simply pulled up to the car in front at a red light. We had been sat there for a few mins with a line of traffic behind us when a car rolled passed us, slowed down, and a woman looked me, the passenger, dead in the eyes with her middle finger up and rolled on to slip towards the largely obstructed right turn lane. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Adrenaline chills went through my entire body and I froze. It was so unexpected.
There are certain aggressive driving situations where it is almost expected you're going to see a middle finger response, but this, 3 mins into waiting at a red light, no movement, in construction, it was so out of the blue, and only I saw. My first thought was “what did we do wrong?” and I could only think, we could have been a couple of feet closer to the car in front. As my husband hadn’t seen, I audibly said “Nope, I’m not going to say it” trying to chant some kind of autopilot calming mantra in the moment and to avoid having to deal with my husband’s limbic reaction in response. But when my husband responded with “What? Did you pick your nose and she saw or something?”, like seriously? What prompted that of all things? I could not hold it back and I blurted out “Did you not see that? She flipped us off”. But he was so dumbstruck, even he didn’t immediately go into fight like I thought he would. Seconds later I chanted the one mantra that did work “Nope, she’s not going to ruin my day... I need to reframe”.
So what do I know? Why? And why now? But given the 2-second interaction, I had to make some assumptions. It was 4:01pm and she was turning right towards the medical centre/hospital. My guess is she was late for an appointment or maybe even work. Biological stress (if for health reasons), emotion stress (anger, maybe guilt) cognitive stress (time pressures), social stress (disapproving boss or secretary), prosocial stress (maybe letting someone down). No one loves traffic and construction. That’s a given. But we were also on storm watch the first half of the week for Hurricane Teddy. And let’s add on the heightened stress load of being 6 months into a pandemic.
Thinking of Kahneman’s work that Stuart outlines in REFRAMED Chapter 4: Age of Reason(s), my System 1, Limbic response to this situation was derogatory, "what a horrible person", "how dare she?", maybe a witty passive-aggressive remark. System 2, Blue Brain response, was that she was self-regulating. It was maladaptive, but it gave her the dopamine hit she needed to carry on when she was in the bottom right of Thayer.
She didn’t ruin my day. Self-Reg made sure of that. But whoever you were, you are on my mind. I hope your day ended in a better place than where we met yesterday and I hope you can come learn Self-Reg one day, I promise it helps.