If you think about it, there are so many things that you only do when you’re in a car. Like talk to yourself. Most people don’t generally talk to themselves, but when they get behind the wheel of a car, they definitely do. Mostly loshon hara about the other drivers.
Basically, I bring this up because a lot of times when you’re in the car, you say things like, “Look at this idiot in front of me.” Is the person really an idiot? Maybe, maybe not. I think it’s possible that we all just become dumber when we get into cars. It’s a car behavior, like the fact that you’re still talking to yourself. Look at all the things we do that have literally zero logical explanation:
- Looking at this guy.
Do you ever pass the driver in front of you and look over just to see if they look as stupid as they drive? Why do we look at their face? Why do we need to know what they look like? Is it in case we see them again, so we can say, “Oh, I don’t want to get behind that guy!”? You’re going to see them at the supermarket, and you’ll be like, “Oh, I don’t want to get in line behind that guy. I know how he drives”?
Are we looking for an explanation? Like he’s driving really slow, and you get ahead and say, “Oh, okay. He’s blind. He has sunglasses and a dog. Now I don’t think badly of him anymore. That explains it.”
Are we hoping it’s someone we know, so we can be like, “Oh, that guy! He’s also a really slow chazzan”?
- Turning down the radio.
How about when you’re driving somewhere you’ve never been, and right before you get to your destination, you have to turn your radio so you can find the address? Why do you do that? Does it help you see better?
Probably you need to turn down the noise so you can concentrate. The whole time you’re driving, you don’t need to concentrate. That last half a block, that’s where you need it. How did you get to this point?
That last little bit; that’s the part the GPS doesn’t know.
Or maybe you need to talk to the other people in the car and get them to help you look for where you’re going. Let them know that you’re no longer talking to yourself. You are now talking to them. Especially if your destination is on the right side of the road and you have to crane your neck down so you can look up at the address numbers. This is why you brought someone.
You also need to turn it down because you honestly don’t know what random thing the radio is going to suddenly spout that might confuse you. You’ll be wondering, “What’s the address again? Is it 187 or 178?” and the radio is going to be like, “1-877 Kars 4 Kids; K-A-R-S Kars 4 Kids♫!”
- Honking. Like at all.
Honking your horn is a socially unacceptable noise you would never make in real life. It’s a rude noise. And it comes standard with the car. I can’t believe that in all these years, we’ve never modified the horn, other than to make smaller cars sound less intimidating. Honking is the least subtle way to communicate. It is literally yelling at a person in public but not actually saying any words. And not either being clear of which car you’re yelling at. It’s the equivalent of barking at someone. If there were words, there would at least be some clue as to whom you’re talking to.
We don’t have the technology to improve this? We can’t even have like 3 buttons that make different types of sounds? No, let’s have one standard noise. There are so many nuances of conversation, but there are zero variations of the horn sound. We can’t even control the tone. The only thing we can control is the length of the honk. How do we turn that into 3 different sounds?
I mean we can do it like a shofar. Like a tekiyah would mean, “Nu?! I’m waiting.” A teruah would mean, “Can I please go ahead of you?” and a shevarim would mean, “Sure, go right ahead!” There would also be a tekiyah gedolah, which would mean, “I am very displeased with what you just did. Perhaps you should take a minute to think about it. With noise in the background.”
- Getting angry at people merging in front of you.
Like it’s something they’re doing to spite you. It’s not at all about them getting somewhere faster.
Though it clearly isn’t. Because they’re only in a hurry until they get ahead of you, and then they’re like, “That’s about right. That’s all the speeding up I had to do. Now I can slow down for the rest of my trip.”
But like normally in society, if someone wants to get ahead of us for some reason, we have no problem with it. We’ll just stand back and let them go. Though maybe it’s about asking. Like if they ask, we’ll say yes, but if they don’t ask, we consider it rude for them to assume.
The thing is, there’s no good way to ask when you’re in a car. There’s only honking. And honking just says, “Move it!” There’s no polite honk, which, again, there should be a polite honk. If people want to ask if they can get ahead of each other, we kind of have to rely on everyone in society understanding the same system of waves and gestures. The waves are not taught in driving school; we kind of all know them.
- Glaring for way too long.
Like when let’s say you make what is probably not the safest traffic decision and you scare another driver -- often someone who was not driving completely safely in the first place. But before they move on, they have to come to a full and complete stop and glare at you. For how long? There’s no standard accepted amount of time, but it’s always just a little bit too long.
Like I got the message already.
Don’t go anywhere; I need to finish staring at you first. Stick around.
The people who glare at you for too long are the same people who lean on their horns for too long. They also have to pick up their hand facing upwards in a “Why?” motion. Like, “Why would you do that?” and then continue moving their hand up and down the entire time you’re stopped.
And you can’t go anywhere until they’re done. Time freezes. And then just at the point where you feel like they’ve been staring at you forever, they’re like, “Um I have places to go.” They suddenly remember, and they speed off.
- Making a Mess.
Kids are ridiculous in cars too. For example, any food that you ever give the kids to keep them quiet in the car they don’t actually eat. They just empty it out into the car seat, and then they hand you back the wrapper to throw out.
It’s not like adults are that much neater when eating in the car. Sure, at least you’re actually eating the food, for the most part. But when you’re at home, you sweep the floor after meals, all wrappers go in the garbage, the garbage gets taken out… How often do you vacuum your car? Once a year? And only because you have to. I don’t even know when non-Jews vacuum their cars. I never see a non-Jew with his car seats out on the lawn, shaking out his floormats.
So when do you clean the car? When you’re having guests in the car? Usually you just tell them to sit on the garbage. Or throw it in the back. You don’t do that in your living room.
“Yeah, sit on the pile of papers; it’s okay. You know what? Throw it behind you.”
You definitely don’t have separate trash bags for paper and plastic. There’s just one bag that has been living in your car since the Obama administration, and you vaguely throw stuff toward the bag and assume it goes in. You don’t know. You can’t make that shot into a bigger garbage at home when you’re looking, you’re going to make it while focused out the window in a car that’s in motion?
It’ll find the garbage; don’t worry.
But when you get to your destination, you don’t say, “Let’s clean up that meal we had in the car.” You say, “Uch. Let’s go inside so they can ask us about traffic.” You’re going to come into their house with a bag of trash?
“Is this for us?”
“No. Where do I throw this?”
And then when you get back to your house, you don’t take care of it either, because by then you’re done. You don’t want to think about the car anymore.
“It’ll clean itself; it’s a car.”
The only way that works is if you have a convertible. Convertibles don’t have stuff all over the floor. You know this, because you see them parked on the street, and every single one is spotless, and you assume it’s because the owner keeps them clean, but no; physics keeps them clean. There’s not even a garbage bag at the passenger’s feet. That’s probably the best thing about convertibles.
That and that you can find address numbers on the passenger side of the car.
Mordechai Schmutter is a weekly humor columnist for Hamodia, a monthly humor columnist, and has written six books, all published by Israel Book Shop. He also does freelance writing for hire. You can send any questions, comments, or ideas to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
