Culture
Live Freely, But Drive Anonymously
You don’t want your fellow drivers to know the first thing about you
Online, I have few secrets. I overshare on Facebook and other social media and you don’t need to read very many of my Medium pieces before you get a pretty good sense of who I am. And I’m OK with that.
On the road? I could be anyone.
You will find zero clues about my political, philosophical or religious beliefs or the makeup of my family. Do I have a dog? Am I more of a First Amendment or Second Amendment sort? Who knows?
People are crazy, and if I’m involved in a traffic accident, I do not want to possibly add to the belligerence of the other driver. You’ll have to make every assumption based on the car I drive, which won’t get you very far.
Others are anxious for you to know who they voted for, what music they listen to, what sports they follow, what pets they have and what religion they believe in. In my town, it’s not very uncommon to see people driving around with a couple of flags (usually some combination of American, Trump, Confederate or the thin blue line bastardization) attached to their pickup truck.
Some even like to helpfully provide a list of their family members’ names, including their children. Why? I can only guess they want to make it easier for someone to lure their kids away into their supposedly candy- or puppy-filled van.
It’s enough that just the way you dress tells people more about you than you’d guess.
Once, in the Before Times, my husband and I were eating dinner at the local all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet when I realized we did not fit in.
“Look,” I whispered to my husband. “We are the only two people in here not wearing any camouflage.” It was true. There were camo pants, camo shirts, camo ball caps — camo everything.
You could have shot an episode of the future Netflix series “Camo Is the New Black,” which I will someday write and produce, in that restaurant.
It isn’t just your clothing that gives you away. It’s how you wear your hair, how fastidiously (or not) you’re groomed, and, honestly, just the way you carry yourself and speak. There are studies that back this up.
This is how we know whether someone is One of Us and whether they’d be acceptable to befriend, date or hire.
I had a bumper sticker once.
As a young mom, I stuck one on on my car that said something like “Affordable healthcare begins with breastfeeding.”
An old woman scolded me in the parking lot of Aldi. She was from the generation that had been sold on bottles and cow’s milk for babies, and she objected to the idea that her way might not have been the best way. (I call her an old woman, but she probably wasn’t much older than I am now. But if I were to see a young mom with such a bumper sticker now, I’d definitely offer at least a smile.)
Every now and then you find yourself in a self-sorted situation in which all the people who obviously think very much as you do come together. Some years ago, we belonged to one of those Community Supported Agriculture co-ops. You’d pay upfront in early spring and then every week you’d get a box of whatever was in season. (It was a little out of our budget, so we haven’t done it again, but not for lack of interest). At the end of the season, we all got together to tour the organic farm and share a potluck.
It was like a dream.
I relaxed, secure in the company of people with whom I agreed about almost everything. I’m not often surrounded by people like that. I live in a community where the red meat eaters in MAGA hats definitely outnumber the vegetarians carrying Patagonia tote bags. (And it strikes me that many people in my community feel that glorious fitting-in feeling all the time. I can’t afford to live in the kind of community where I’d feel at home to that degree.)
So why am I completely OK with oversharing online but not on the road?
On the road, I am not going to have any kind of productive encounters.
The person in the next lane is not going to roll down his window and yell, “Hey, I saw your bumper stickers and I think we should become friends! Follow me home!”
But online?
Not long ago, a woman sent me a message and friend request on Facebook. She’d seen that we’re both married to Dutch guys and had a few other notable things in common. I checked her profile, noted that we appeared to be kindred souls, and said yes.
I can only imagine what a relief it is for our husbands to be able to speak Dutch together regularly. Without my penchant for oversharing on social media, we wouldn’t have found each other.
Gone, for most of us, are the days when we had lots of extended family living nearby with whom we could have big weekly get-togethers. (I’m jealous of those who do.)
Most of us will have to find our “family” where we can, and in today’s world, that might mean looking online. If you scroll social media, you will indeed find like-minded people who nicely sort themselves into categories. We have met a number of people via social media.
Let your freak flag fly online all you want, but keep that shit secret when you’re on the road. That’s my advice.