My co-workers called me a Pusher and when it came to driving to and from work or lunch, I was. My desire was and is for others to get out of my way. For pushers like me, rush hour traffic is vehicular nirvana, an endless supply of new goals; as soon as we claim success with one push, the next target is in sight. Convincing one to move is a little championship every time.

Though there were days and days of pushing bliss, there were also times when the system broke down and I stewed about all those other bad drivers.  I compiled and refined a list of driving habits that make me nuts and here are the top offenders: braking immediately after changing lanes, speeding up when being passed, refusing to give way to the pushers, running red lights, not understanding your responsibilities in a merge situations versus yield situations, not accelerating to traffic speed when entering a highway.  I support the death penalty for those. Before the trial.

Then I retired and discovered a big, new world of driving frustration populated by non-rush-hour drivers or what I call “daytime” drivers.  The first thing to understand is that “imminent danger to others” is the only skill level they have other than average. Things that would result in a rush hour first-drive death are top of the class during the day.

Each time I leave home I am disappointed anew in the length of time the trip takes. Traveling by car during rush hour takes no more time than a regular drive, unless there is a backup and, frankly, I am convinced that all backups are the result of a daytime driver’s attempts to navigate in the rush hour world.  The wasted time factor is a constant, whether the result of sitting in one spot for 8 minutes to wait your turn, because there was an 88-year-old driver in the left lane who should have a periscope installed to help their sightline or because the driver in front of me stops at every intersection to read the street name.  It may be one of those identifiable constants like pi.  What it means is that my time is wasted.  Frustration is a variable.

As fearsomely incompetent as these clueless wonders are, unfortunately, they are not the only ones thwarting my efforts to acclimate to daytime driving.  There are the workers in trucks.  They know who else is out there and they combat the slow by pulling out in front of anyone headed their way.  Enter the former rush hour racer doing the almost-legal six miles over the limit and by the time the worker realizes that he has miscalculated because I’m going faster than anticipated, I’ve already had to hit the brakes and am considering an appropriate salute.

Don’t get me wrong, I love retirement and the ability to set my schedule. I just hate driving during the day.  It’s worse than rush hour and I believed it would be better. In rush hour the other drivers would make shockingly aggressive moves and sometimes they were personal.  I drove a sporty, red BMW for a while and I promise you the affronts by other drivers were quite different than the years I spend pushing folks with a white minivan, so don’t tell me it’s not personal.  But I always thought the other drivers were aware of their surroundings. I assure you that most of the other drivers out there during the day are not. Except me, of course. I’m a good driver.