Louis C.K.’s “Oh My God” performance probably belongs on my top favorite standup tours.
But, for some reason, this bit is the one that’s stuck out the most:
The irony is that when I’m not destined to sit in traffic or rocketing across a highway homicidally (I’m not a good driver when I need to be somewhere – I’m nervous, never leave on time, always speed, and have unyielding road rage), I also use driving… to calm down. Subtract those time restrictions, add in some tranquil soundtrack to guide my wandering car down a few scenic, local roads, and I could be the calm protagonist in an indie movie montage. But as the D.C. traffic slowly starts to overflow into these bordering suburban streets I used to use for relief, I’m finding these two opposing transit moods – which could formerly remain independent from one another – blending.
The quaint stress relieving mile long – if that – drive I take from home is now littered within a minute with those who I can assume are high on carbon emissions from sitting in traffic. Because no one’s that dumb. No one’s that dumb to turn left on a red light, yes? We’ve agreed on green being the only appropriate color? Just – not red? And we all know that an acceptable right turn on red does not mean navigate your car across three lanes mid turn and end on top of mine because waiting and using your blinker was inconceivably inconvenient for you, yes?
There comes a point when even Louie’s vitriolic indictments are insufficient.
I’ve repeated my curses so much, they’ve become like a meditation mantra – inadvertently dulling me into peace. Which makes me even angrier because that’s not what I was going for at all. In my desensitization to my own communicated wrath, I’ve had to reach out to new and exciting forms of hatred. My former go to: sarcasm. Especially after a long day of writing, when I have to stretch my brain and the English language and abstract ideas, this starts to come so naturally that I don’t even realize it until I’ve spat out a whole monologue in front of someone I forgot was sitting in the car with me.
“Welcome to the left lane!”
(After a dilapidated Cadillac’s just cut me off)
“Yeah, I’m Ashley! I’ll be your guide! Let me know if I can do ANYTHING for you during your stay here,”
(They swerve up ahead of me – and almost hit an oncoming car)
“WOW! What.A.Trick! Where did you learn that? Can I learn that? I want to learn that! You should teach me. Also you should keep driving. A lot. Because, ya know, of how GOOD you are at it. Also, you should breed,”
(They slam on their brakes for no reason)
“Where did THAT come from? No, I totally saw it too! Oh… what? Why am I keeping an extra car length between us? Oh, well it’s DEFINITELY not because I’m hoping that your engine erupts and you die in a car fire so Hiroshima level huge that the next zip code can see it without trying. And it’s definitely not because I’m hoping that thought so deeply and viscerally hard with all my heart, liver, spleen, and anal sphincter that I actually believe I could will it into existence and am breaking into a sweat trying. Definitely not.”
Where does this come from? And why?
I’m just worried about what happens when I start to desensitize to my own sardonic diatribes like I did profanity.
Just how slippery a slope is it from “tired of violent irony” to tire iron violence?