Miracle on Franklin Avenue

or, a story about big honkers

A couple of years ago, I decided to go for a more “achievable” New Year’s Resolution, something challenging and life-enhancing but also, small to the pointof near-stupidity. For example, near the end of last year, I decided I would stop using my car’s horn in non-life-threatening situations.

If you’re already wondering, “What kind of asshole uses the horn in non-life threatening situations?” I’m not here to convert you. I know it’s noise pollution, and childish, and rude, and yet I continue to get disproportionately angry with strangers who are texting when they should be realizing that the light is green. And so I take my very dumb revenge, via honk. When I’m overwrought, I don’t scream at my kids or pick fights with my husband — that all gets saved for the car, when I’m by myself, with no one else to hear me but God and my upholstery. On a given day, I range from "grouchy dad in a movie set in the 1950s" to "PMDD Jerry Seinfeld." You know -- "When did they start putting these dumb adhesive bands on bananas? They come naturally bunched!" et cetera. And for whatever reason, I'm at my worst in the car.

When I shared this with a therapist I was seeing at the time, she offered a number of “helpful suggestions.” (I’d recently made the switch from a tough-love therapist to the kind who just sides with you on everything for an extra $150.) Her suggestions were based on actual anger management guidance for people even more irritable than I am, people who have been brought up on charges for real-deal rage incidents. One strategy is — seriously — saying the words “beep beep" instead of using your horn. Another is trying to express your feelings without involving or engaging the other person (i.e. yelling “I am upset that you didn’t use your turn signal, because I am late for work!” to yourself, instead of at someone who might get out of their car and slap you). I appreciate these non-violent solutions, and yet I also must urge you to picture the angriest person you know, like, I don’t know, my cousin who got reprimanded at his UPS delivery job for listening to Korn too loudly, or NFL offensive coordinator Ken Dorsey. Whoever that is for you, imagine them, please, gently shouting “Beep beep” to him or herself after almost being t-boned by a 20-something who zoned out while trying to open a third Celsius in a Dodge Challenger.

Not long after I got that therapist’s advice and totally failed to apply it, something exciting happened.

I was en route to school with my kids, late as usual, stuck on a narrow stretch of Franklin Avenue, when a private waste management truck parked at a forty-five-degree angle in the center of the road. Two gentlemen in coveralls leisurely exited the truck and began negotiating an enormous dumpster from the parking lot of a nearby shopping center, so that they might empty it into their trash truck. When I say “leisurely,” I mean that they were so jolly and unhurried that they seemed like they were in some kind of ambulatory book club, maybe one that was just dying to talk about “All Fours” with a couple of canned rosés, rather than two idiots blithely blocking both lanes of rush-hour traffic.

With each passing moment, I could actually see the people in the cars around me going from the usual city-dweller “Can you believe this?” to throwing up their hands in despair and shaking them, like actors in a local production of "Les Miserables.”

Two full cycles of the stoplight passed without traffic moving in either direction, as our unbothered heroes wheeled the dumpster in a zig-zag pattern around the shopping center parking lot, still chatting amiably about, I don’t know, the latest season of the “The Morning Show,” or whatever. And here's where things got good: the door to a dingy little white hatchback a few cars ahead of me opened up, and out popped a muscly short guy.

And he was mad.

You may not have seen this particular guy before, but you’ve seen a “this guy” before. You know: the type who looks like he’s sculpted out of ground turkey, or has a bad photorealistic tattoo of a toddler on his forearm. The type of who gets into it with the hostess at Outback Steakhouse because he saw an elderly couple who came in after him get seated before him. The type of guy who wears tank tops in winter, because he’s built like a shaved Lorax on HGH.

This “this guy” yelled something at the two waste disposal gentlemen, and when they ignored or didn’t hear him, he spun around with great purpose... and headed for his trunk.

My kids leaned forward in their car seats (they're five, six, and seven — ages pediatricians frequently cite as a child's most blood-lustful). I could see other stuck drivers doing the same, although with a little more concern for the actual violence that might be about to unfold in front of us. I could tell we were all picturing being on that evening’s edition of KTLA news, wearing a bewildered expression, as we told a Juvedermed anchor named Kirk about how we’d just seen a human head explode on impact with a tire jack, before Kirk threw back to the studio for a story about how the Shamrock Shake is back at McDonald’s.

There was a collective clench as The Guy’s beefy little torso disappeared into his tiny little car, where he rooted around angrily for something. We looked from him back to the two oblivious dumpster wranglers, who seemed to be moving with even less urgency than before, pushing the big container onto the truck's hydraulic lift in the placid, half-attentive way you push might a toddler in a baby swing. All despite the fact that they were maybe about to be publicly super- murdered.

A tense moment later, the muscly guy emerged, holding an absolutely enormous bullhorn.

Well, now we could all relax. Now, the real fun started.

"ATTENTION JERKOFFS! MOVE YOUR FUCKIN TRUCK! I'M TALKING TO YOU, PIN DICKS! I’M TALKING TO YOU, FUCKNUTS! MOVE YOUR DUMB ASS BEFORE I PUT MY FOOT UP YOUR ASS HOLES!”

I don't know whether he was an off-duty fireman, or a parade organizer, or a hostage negotiator or what. Maybe he had the bullhorn just to yell at people in traffic! It didn't matter. He said “ass holes,” like it was two separate words, and he said it loud. This went on for some time — in a true feat of poetry, or improvisation, he never repeated the same florid insult twice.

Of course, everybody started applauding and hooting. And honking! But honking in that fun, jovial way that happens when your team wins the World Series. The garbage twins seemed to notice us all for the first time, and more importantly, they began to hustle. That small angry hotdog of man had performed an every day, big city miracle: the two garbage men moved their garbage truck, the cars advanced, and my children made it to school armed with a couple (several) brand new words.

As for me... Well, hero or not, I wasn’t cheering as loud as everybody else (definitely not as loud as my five-year-old, who was still holding out hope that somebody might get a good whack with the bullhorn). I was busy worrying, fretting, being afraid, of the anger. In the bullhorn guy, in everybody in the other cars, but also in me. I want to be the kind of citizen and mother who keeps a cool head, who can stay grounded and helpful through the inconvenient and the scary and the infuriating. I wish I was a person and parent with great reserves of fortitude and patience in a way that stabilizes and comforts other people in times when we’re all frightened and inconvenienced and furious. We need those people, the peaceful ones who wait for things to pass and know that they will. I wish I was, but I’m afraid I’m not. And now, I’ve never been more not.

Not long after the dumpster excitement, I went back to my “tough love” therapist, who told me that my nice therapist had given me dumb advice. (This therapist-on-therapist beef alone was worth the price of eating two co-pays.) My tough-love therapist said that as long as I wasn't hurting anybody, it was fine to be angry. Normal, even. “Better to punch a pillow than kick the dog,” she said, and explained: trying to not be angry was impossible— it’s what you do with the feeling that matters. Then she probably said something unintentionally cutting about my hair.

Beep, beep.