We’re on St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands. All the islanders we have met have been extraordinarily friendly: Life in the Caribbean just as we imagine it.
Dan has mastered the art of driving on the left side of the road with a right-side-drive car but the roads are a shambles. Sometimes a bit worse than that. On what should be a five-minute drive from our hotel to the restaurant, road work has reduced a fairly long stretch of road to only one lane wide. And a narrow lane at that. A construction traffic light is in operation, allowing each direction of traffic to move through the construction zone by turns. It is a long light because it is designed to ensure that all the traffic going in one direction has cleared the construction area before it gives the green light to traffic heading in the other direction.
We wait patiently through the long light on the way to the restaurant. But things have gotten worse by the time we return. The northbound lane is backed up almost as far as the restaurant itself. We get in line. A few cars come back the other way. Very few. We creep forward.
Eventually, the light is in sight. It turns green. No one moves. A few cars from behind us pull out to the right (into the lane for oncoming traffic) and speed toward the one-lane area, hoping to make it through before the light changes again. “There must be a breakdown up ahead in our lane,” we think.
The light turns red. A few cars come through the other way. But wait a moment! Aren’t those the cars that just went by from our side? We aren’t sure.
The light turns green again. Several cars pass by from behind us, and, seeing a small break, Dan pulls out into the moving lane. Or tries to. The car coming up from behind speeds up, honks angrily, and won’t let us in. Dan mutters his opinion of which part of the anatomy best describes the driver. “Idiot,” I agree.
The light turns red. Dan pulls back into our lane so as not to block oncoming traffic and decides to walk up to the front of the line to see what’s going on. While I wait in the car, I see cars returning down the oncoming lane. One car in particular is backing down the road very quickly, angrily, barely in control. I recognize the car. It’s the same guy who cut us off earlier. “Jerk!” I say to no one in particular. I didn’t consider that my car window was open to the warm island breeze. As was his.
He screeches to a halt, pulls up even with me. “What you say?” he demands. There are two men in the car, large men. The driver has a face as round as the moon, as black as the night. His features twist with anger. “What you say?”
I am a woman alone in an open car. “You shouldn’t drive like that,” I tell him, trying to be diplomatic. “You’re angry, you make everyone around you angry, too. Try to be a little nicer.”
“Don’t you go calling me no jerk!” He is almost yelling. Who knows, maybe I’m the third person today that has told him he’s a jerk. First his girlfriend, then his boss, and now me. I don’t know about the others, but as for me, he isn’t going to let me get away with it.
I have a moment of illumination. By being angry at him, I too am making things worse. I’m making myself a worse person, and I’m making him angrier. Which will make things worse for everyone he chances upon along the way. In his life. I decide I must take a stand.
“You’re right,” I say. “I shouldn’t have said that. It was wrong of me, and I’m sorry. I should have more sympathy. But you really should try to be a little nicer. It would make things better for everybody.”
We look at each other for a moment. He nods slightly and drives off. I like to think: not quite as recklessly as before. But I’m not sure.
I like to think that just possibly there might be one fewer jerk out there in the world today.
Who knows?