A new year unfolds before us. The past is past and beckons us to turn hopeful faces toward the eternal promise of the future. For many of us that means making a pledge to be better. We make resolutions. We vow to eat better, drink less, read more, run faster, stretch out our arms farther and one fine morning – achieve our ideal body fat percentage. Experience shows that most of these resolutions lay like broken wreckage by the end of January.
I have made resolutions about driving in the past and had mixed results. It is with this knowledge that I usually resolve to continue not to do the things I was not doing in the preceding year. There is something about 2023, however, that makes me want to change things up and give growth another shot. In 2023, I resolve to:
Finally understand my car
Modern automobiles have many technological options and entertainment system frills. For instance, I can personalize my key. At present I am known to my 2021 Mini Cooper Countryman ALL4 as “Mini Driver 1.” This is, in part, an homage to the actress Minnie Driver but, for the most part, because of my utter disinterest in learning anything new. When I get a car, I want to drive, so I learn about the engine, the brakes, the mirrors, the tires and then I get down to business. What are those buttons that program the radio called? I have not preprogrammed them. “Even old cars had that ability,” says my wife, who has completely personalized our car, her key, and all her channels. I have programmed the car’s voice that asks me what I want, to have an English accent because I like the idea of having an English butler.
Thank a crossing guard
They are out there Monday to Friday in all kinds of weather. They have one mission – keep kids (and everyone else) safe when walking to school. The other morning, I spied a crossing guard holding his stop sign wearing a Santa hat. It reminded me how much I dislike it when people wear Santa hats. It’s depressing. If you ask me there are only two kinds of people who wear Santa hats – those who are drunk in public and those who are on their way to getting drunk in public.
But this crossing guard did not fit into either category. He was cheerfully ushering schoolchildren across a busy intersection. He was quietly doing service, without accolades or applause. We should celebrate these unsung heroes.
Have no doubt, there is real heroism to the job, sometimes even heroic sacrifice. In 2021, for example, a San Francisco crossing guard named Ashley Dias was struck and killed by an SUV after he pushed children out of its way, saving the life of at least one child. Diaz, 45, was a clinical research associate at a biotech firm and had volunteered to work as a crossing guard.
Thankfully, such sacrifices are rare, but it should remind all of us that crossing guards protect children and other pedestrians from harm. They don’t make a fortune. Most of them do it out of a sense of duty, pride and concern for their fellow citizens. Since 2005, the injury prevention charity Parachute has selected Canada’s Favourite Crossing Guard. I resolve this year to thank a crossing guard – maybe two. It’s the least I can do.
Not take things so personally
Driving can be frustrating. This frustration leads to profane outbursts. Many a driver hurls insults, makes obscene gestures and uses their horn as if it were the cry of a Harpy. In 2022, I let these attacks get to me. In 2023, I resolve to accept them for what they are. They are not personal attacks on my character. They are the desperate lamentations of poor souls cowering beneath the paling light and lowering clouds as the darkling heavens fade; lifting their heads upward to see that no starlight gleams amid the gloomy silence of the night, but heavy mists brood low upon the Earth and those bright mansions of the heavenly gods are sicklied over with the hues of hell.
And so, with apologies to the Roman dramatist Seneca, let’s put 2022 in the rear-view. Happy New Year and safe driving.