How much bullshit do we create in order to look like we're good people?

I was pulling out of a parking lot, turning left. This guy stops his car in the street to let me out. Nice thing to do, right? He’s being helpful, right? Nope. The dude’s an asshole.

To be fair, I’ve been succumbing to road rage rather frequently recently. I almost got into a fight with a guy in a shopping mall parking lot because he was parking his pickup a little too aggressively for my liking.

So maybe take what I’m going to say with a grain of salt.

But this asshole who was “letting me in” had no one in front of him for several car lengths — way more than enough space for both of us — and there was no one coming behind him. He basically just saw me turning left out of a parking lot and stopped dead in the middle of the road to be nice.

And it seems nice, right? Wrong, because that’s not how things normally work. I thought maybe he was letting me in, but I wasn’t sure because it didn’t make any goddamn sense. In Normal Driving World, he would’ve driven past and I would have pulled out right behind him. Super easy. No problem. Instead this too-kind fucker stops cold mid-street.

So I start wondering if something else is going on. You see, not only do I succumb to road rage all the time, I’m also aware that I’m a shit driver. And since I know I’m a shit driver, I’m not just going to pull out in front of this motherfucker. Maybe there were some baby ducks crossing the street that I didn’t see, and I’ve already ran over way too many baby duckies.1

So asshole helpful guy stops. I get confused. I check for baby duckies. At this point I’m 90 percent convinced he wants me to go, so I hesitantly start to pull out in front of him, but at that exact same instant I guess he gave up on me because he starts to hesitantly pull forward, too. Like synchronized car lurching. So we both stomp on our brakes, and he starts to wave me on to go in front of him.

Nope. Fuck that. I’m done. I do not take his wave. I refuse the wave, and I very deliberately point at him and then point down the road, and I keep doing it until he pulls his head out of his butt and drives down the damn road like he was supposed to in the first place. Take your impotent, pretentious driving courtesy and shove it up your ass.

And please don’t get confused. This isn’t a story about bad driving and road rage. It’s a story about bullshit righteousness.

As humans, we have the need to continually create and maintain a positive self image. We need to be able to look at ourselves in the mirror and say, “Hey, there’s that good person.” We also desperately want others to view us as good people, too. 

So by stopping in the middle of the street to let me turn left, Helpful Asshole hamfistedly forced a story of how nice a person he is. After all, he had the right of way. He didn’t have to stop, but he did anyway because he’s such a caring, thoughtful person. And from his perspective I was too stupid and mean to accept his generous sacrifice.

But if you’re selfishly determined to be helpful when nobody wants or needs your help, you’re just getting in the way. Sometimes the most help you can give is to just simply be normal and unremarkable. My day would have been better if Helpful Asshole just drove like a normal fucking person. I wouldn’t have gotten all pissy, and we both would have gotten where we were going faster than we actually did. 

He made my life less convenient and both our lives more frustrating with his short-sighted attempt at a good deed. And I contend that his motivation was not altruism, but it was an attempt (admittedly, it was probably subconscious) to make himself look good.

But it turns out I’m full of shit.

I know I need to calm the fuck down in general, and especially when I’m driving. I could make the world a better place if I did that. And the world would be a better place if I assumed the best motives in others. Helpful Asshole didn’t start his day by diagraming out a plan to make some stranger’s exit from a parking lot awkward, frustrating and inconvenient. He just reacted to the circumstances that he found himself in. He wanted to be helpful. Sure he failed hard, but — whatever his motives — he was trying to make the world a little better. 

So what really happened? I refused an act of kindness. That makes me a dick. But just like everyone else, I need to maintain my own positive self image, so I’ve gone through all these mental gymnastics to try to show that Helpful Asshole was a hypocrite or a secret narcissist or a shortsighted dumbshit, when what I’m really trying to do is make myself feel better because I was a dick.

God’s not around. He’s not going to make everything right and just and good and fair in the long run. In theory I want to be somebody who helps make the journey at least a little bit better for my fellow meat suit earth travelers, but in reality I was a dick and spent a bunch of energy trying to demonize someone who arguably was really doing something in an effort to make my journey a little bit better. 

So in the end I’m the hypocrite and the secret narcissist. But I can still feel good about myself because I didn’t murder any baby duckies.

1I’ve never run over any baby duckies. I hit a full grown crow once. Learn how to fly away from oncoming traffic, you fucking crow. Good riddance. Right, Darwin?