David Tarrell at In the Moment, and 2007 Criminal Defense Lawyer of the Year, has posted two stories about his experiences on the road that are not only vivid and moving, but provide a palpable reminder of how people see the world around them through their own limited experience which may not be shared by the person driving the car in front or behind.

In his first post, Proximity to Tragedy, David and his daughter watched as a motorcyclist crossing his path appeared to lose control of his bike as he crested a hill. 

At first I thought he was having fun, scaring his friend, but he kept it up too long, shaking back and forth too far, just as he went over down the hill and out of my sight. I didn’t think, I just yelled what came to mind, “Oh God, No, he’s going down!” I saw the friend turn and look ahead, where I couldn’t see, seemingly alarmed too. My daughter screamed back at me, asking what I saw, unused to having to look at other cars as we rode. I screamed, “No! No! No!, shocked, thinking that I’d just seen a kid turn from having fun to becoming a road stain in seconds. I thought that down that hill lay a rolled bike, a skinny kid wearing a sleeveless tee and shorts become at least a severe road rash victim on his way to the hospital. Perhaps worse.

As he sat there, stunned and trying to figure out whether to turn and see if this young man was alive, reality kicked him in the face in the form of a white Corolla.

The woman in the white corolla right behind me, shaking her hands at my face in the rearview mirror, telling me to get my ass in gear. I pointed to place the kid had gone, thinking somehow that she’d figure out, perhaps from the reactions of the cars going down there, what I’d just seen and why I wasn’t moving fast.

But she screamed even more, her hands flying up at her windshield, yelling at me for holding her up for those few seconds, those few car lengths of time.

In his second post, Road Rage 2: “Electric Bugaloo”, David recounts the everyday experience of picking up his kid from school, gone wrong.

Last year, riding with my wife on the way to pick up my kids after middle school, a mini van pulls behind us. I can tell the driver is upset as she drives close behind me. But she goes further than a typical tailgater, weaving back and forth. When I don’t react, and just keep driving, the speed limit mind you, she starts waving her hands at me. I turn a few times, driving through a neighborhood by the school, and she stays right behind me. When I make the last turn, moving down the driveway in front of the school, she’s still there, still waving her hands at me, acting crazy.

As luck would have it, the “crazy woman” is picking up her kid from school too, ending up standing right next to David and his wife as they waited for their children to come out.

I want to yell at her, to embarrass her if that’s what it takes, to teach her a lesson about not driving crazy around my kids.

 I avoid the temptation to ask her who the hell she thinks she is and instead hear myself ask her, “you doin’ o.k.?”

“No,” is all she says, almost whining, her body language telling me she’s desperate but not yet ready to talk about it.

Then the lady looks at us, stressed and embarrassed, and says, “I’m sorry.” “It’s just… there’s been, um, there’s been a…. we lost someone in our family and we really have to get home.”

Both stories are compelling and carry a moral that we could all stand to remember.  Like it or not, we all think to some extent that we are the center of the universe, and that what exists in our head is the only thing that matters.  As David reminds us, it’s just not so.