Bigger Isn't Better

I am driving down the road at the posted speed limit. Approximately three inches behind the rear bumper of my little Honda is a sport utility vehicle. Its headlines shine directly into my rearview mirrors.
I appears that the driver wants to get to know me. I slow down, whereupon the SUV driver honks the horn, flashes the headlights and, without signaling, passes me. I look to see who this friendly driver is.
Is it a 6-foot-5, 350-pound gorilla with a testosterone overdose? Or a freaked-out meth addict looking for his next fix?
Nope. It is a woman.
We all know that females are mannerly, nurturing and loving. At least the ones I know are.
I wondered: How could it be that a female was exhibiting the characteristics of a Boston cab driver here in Oregon?
I found the answer in the newspaper recently. It was in the “Car Talk” column that Tom and Ray Magliozzi write. They also have a radio show on National Public Radio.
In the column, a woman makes a confession. She says that, normally, she is polite, caring and generally pretty nice to be around.
However, when she gets behind the wheel of her new SUV, she becomes a different person, cutting off other drivers and expressing her inner orneriness.
At one point, she said, she got into an altercation with another driver.
The kicker, she said, was that she is a middle-school religion teacher.
What is it, then, that causes a perfectly normal person to become transformed into a highway hog?
I think some people just have a hard time dealing with big.
I know. I am a reformed big vehicle driver. Actually, our old 15-passenger van made most SUVs look like a compact. It was huge. When I wanted to change lanes on the interstate nothing short of a semi-truck could make me do otherwise.
Parking lots were my personal domain. Because it took up two parking spaces, my van was the gorilla in the forest of vehicles. I parked wherever I darn well pleased.
I did receive my comeuppance, however. Once we were camping in the redwoods in northern California with our van and tent trailer. The sign on the road warned that no vehicles towing trailers were allowed.
“Honey, don’t you think we should stop?” my wife asked.
“Nah, we’re fine,” I assured her. And we were fine for about a mile. The trees got bigger and bigger, and the road got narrower and narrower.
Pretty soon, we couldn’t go any farther. Two redwoods grew right up to the side of the road. Short of using a chainsaw, we’d never be able to get past. We were stuck.
All of which was highly entertaining to our four kids.
“Whatcha gonna do now, Dad?” they chorused.
I ignored the taunting.
My wife was silent. She was either confident that I would figure something out, or she was figuring out how long it would take to walk back to the main road and hitchhike home.
After a little reconnoitering, we did find a spot big enough to turn the van and trailer around, and we headed back to the campground.
When we passed the “No Trailers” sign, my wife pointed to it. She only said one thing: “That must mean everyone.”
In some things, bigger is not better.