Tuesday List: What I Learned in Traffic, north of Bowling Green

September 4, 2007 in Sanctification, Tuesday List

On Saturday, on our way to Alabama for a wedding, Laura and I got stuck in horrible traffic. We traveled about four miles in about two hours. It taught me (or brought back to my attention) a lot about how jacked up I am.

Here’s a no-particular-order list:

1. I am selfish. I kept thinking the whole time, “This sucks.” How the situation affected me consumed me — not even about running late, but solely the inconvenience and discomfort of driving a stick shift in stopped traffic.

2. I am inflexible. Ask anyone who’s known me more than 10 seconds (my usual end-of-facade time limit), and they’ll tell you: I’m about as flexible as a brick. Once a plan sets itself into my head, the sky falls if the plans change.

3. I give up easily. I learn this constantly. I settle for mediocrity so often, and so often stop short of what I could attain. I was ready to toss in the towel, and turn around after the traffic, even though we were still on pace to (just barely) make it.

4. I am not compassionate. I actually said something like, “Even if someone died they shouldn’t have shut down the interstate on Labor Day weekend.” How can I even describe such utterly selfish thinking? To start, let’s all think of the talking donkey on Shrek. Now, remove any charm, humor and talking ability and what do you have? Me. Hee-haw.

5. I am hypocritical. I wanted to shoot people who rode the shoulder to the exit. But, if I could have done it, I would have.

6. I am way too easily frustrated. Ultimately, what’s a couple of hours? The longer we sat, though, the more I wanted to scream.

7. I react poorly to adversity or “When I have to use the restroom, I become very testy.” I’ll let the second title speak for itself.

I’m going to stop here, because I’m tired of thinking about how messed up I am.

Really, I need to thank God for the Cross, because I should be going to hell for how I reacted to a shut-down interstate.