Getting Older and Always Talking About Traffic
This past year my wife and I bought a car. It’s not quite having a child, it’s not quite buying a house, it’s not quite a dog. But in a very real sense, our 2019 Volkswagen Jetta AKA Jetta World Peace represents a new addition to our family and family infrastructure.
Since purchasing the car, a new space in my brain has open for business up called “car concerns.” The new area of mental real estate deals with any sort of issue with the car—fear of getting a flat tire, maintenance fluctuating opinions about Geico—but it’s primarily focused on parking. We park on the street, which I’d argue is one of the more aggressive and ruthless subcultures of 21st century New York City. A standup friend of mine once mused that whenever he sees an open parking spot, he immediately fantasizes about it in the way he might a potential romantic partner. It’s an accurate observation.
Having a car has also fully opened up a rite of passage of adulthood: complaining about, and always being concerned with, traffic. Both my wife and I have fully become these types of people. We regularly discuss traffic patterns with a sort of exasperated enthusiasm. If you made a word cloud of our conversations, the BQE and The Belt would be embarrassingly over-represented. The BQE tends to frequently ruin our day, but in a Stockholm Syndromey sort of way. My wife may feel otherwise, but I now couldn’t imagine my life without it. Because while getting stuck in bad traffic is inevitable and expected, the ability to occasionally engineer the day to avoid traffic is an accomplishment that comes with a high that could keep me going for days.
I have been thinking about this a lot lately: why do adults discuss traffic this way? There is a hatred no doubt of being inconvenienced, but there also usually appears to be a sense of achievement. You tell someone it took you three hours to get from Flushing to Jersey City—someone might weirdly respect you more. A war metaphor seems egregiously ill-conceived, but there’s some parallel there on a super-small level. Maybe it’s that in our world of instant convenience and “frictionless” aspirations, we actually crave mentally grueling experiences such as these—maybe not so much in the moment, but afterwards.
Or maybe it’s just this relationship and appreciation with infrastructure that grows with age. My wife and I have been recently discussing the reality that we’re in a of a new phase of adulthood; we’re pretty much done with the “work hard, play hard” ethos that usually occupies people in their 20s; going out to a bar until 2am and showing up to work the next morning, for example, doesn’t do it anymore; there’s no longer a sense of getting away with something as there is a sense of dread and irritation from having put myself in an unnecessary hole. We’re more in a “build-and-maintain,” phase, focused on a combination of longer-term planning and treating our bodies and minds in a way that’s healthy and sustainable. Whereas 5-6 years ago I was only really looking ahead to the next day/week + 6 months down the road, I’m now simultaneously looking ahead to tomorrow/this week, 6 months, and 30 years. Experiences and trips and nights out are great, but I’d argue I’m more concerned with putting myself in a position to be able to enjoy experiences that are less in frequency but greater in personal fulfillment; allocating a responsible amount of money towards a trip, but also for an upcoming appliance purchase; eating well and exercising to best prepare for whatever is coming in the weeks, months, and years ahead.
What does all of this have to do with traffic? There is a relationship—maybe a tenuous one, but hear me out. Dealing with traffic is one of the unavoidable realities of being a person who must get to places and fulfill obligations, professionally or personally. Adults in this aformentioned “build-and-maintain” phase of adulthood have a more profound respect for the foundations that makes all of these things possible.
So being able to utilize the foundational infrastructure (the BQE) in a way that is effective (waking up a little early to beat the traffic, and avoid unnecessary stress and putting yourself in a position to succeed in what you’re trying to accomplish in a given day, for example) represents a great accomplishment. At the same time, dealing with accidents or unavoidable traffic patterns is also a triumph: you are someone who has endured something en route to fulfilling a responsibility or getting to where you want to go in life. These things, in turn, make you the person you both currently are and wish to become. All made possible by the crumbling Brooklyn Queens Expressway.