A Love Letter to Honking
My dearest,
After a particularly grueling day in Vancouver traffic, I realized one of my true loves in this world. My one tether to sanity when the roads turn to parking lots - the ability to let the strangers who cross my path know that they are in fact complete and utter nincompoops.
It’s you honk, but I admit it hasn’t always been you.
You see, I grew up in a city where honking is saved for the few and far between life-threatening type scenarios. Otherwise, patience and kindness were a way of life in the driving world. I was so naïve to your alluringly satisfying ways that it didn’t even cross my mind as a possibility until it was too late. I found myself crushed by that realization, that missed opportunity.
However, now that I’m in the “big city” (by Canadian standards) honking is accepted, encouraged and embraced as a way of life.
I indulge in your many glorious forms to keep the general driving population apprised of their idiocies.
A long lustful honk for someone who has put my life at risk
The morse code honk for that special someone who is sitting under a no left-hand turn sign, with the left-hand turn signal on
A love tap for someone texting stopped in front of a green light
An impatient medium length honk for someone who has just cut you off
You are the last form of satisfying and acceptable Public Displays of Emotion (PDE) left. One used to be able to have a meltdown or two, in the comfort of complete strangers, without it being recorded and posted forever on the internet for people you know to see. These outbursts are now able to single handedly destroy careers, relationships and livelihoods.
But not you honk. That horn is a quick therapy session, a security blanket, a ray of light in an otherwise bleak world of frustrating traffic. The possibility of leaning into that steering wheel to tell someone off without words, and without confrontation, is worth the sheer terror I face behind the wheel of the car in this city. I am never let down by your satisfaction when I lean in.
You, as any other love, are not without flaws. You are loud, you are obnoxious, you make my ears bleed at times. I don’t enjoy hearing from you when I am not inside my own vehicle, but alas, this is the price I must pay.
Love always,
Vanessa
XOXO
