In Cars
I feel safest of all
You finish your coffee and pay up. The omelette was so good, and the service so polite, you feel compelled to leave a generous tip. Alright, it’s not that generous. It’s as generous as you can be right now. Times are tough. But you still gotta do what you can to be decent to other people.
You get into your car and turn the key in the ignition. The engine rumbles and hums. A full tank, and a full belly.
You drive towards the freeway and remember how you used to take the kids to that very same diner when they were little. They’d have pancakes, sometimes with bacon or sausage on the side. And, sure as the sun sets in the west, they’d always fall asleep on the way back home. Their sudden snoozes always felt so unexpected; just a few minutes before, they were bouncing off the walls with boysenberry syrup and orange juice. Back then, your daughter in particular was like a walking exclamation point – always excited, often over-excited, especially when it came to food. To see her pass out, so quickly and thoroughly, was always a surprise – and to be honest, a relief. Like a buzzing neon sign, suddenly switched off.
She would never nap at home. But there’s something about the comfort of the car that induces sleep. You’d probably fall asleep, too, if it weren’t for all the coffee. The car is a safe space. Imagine the white noise you’d hear inside the womb. Maybe you don’t have to imagine it – maybe you’ve actually heard it, warped and crackled through the speakers of an ultrasound machine. There’s an ear-in-a-seashell echo of the ocean, a fine-grained sandy hiss. There’s a low rumble, and the flutter and thump of two hearts, one small and close, one huge and far away. Beyond that sonic atmosphere, there are lower, distant murmurs and occasional bursts of something higher-pitched: laughter, a siren, a song, a crow.
But none of it can affect you. None of it penetrates your cocoon. No wonder she always fell asleep. It’s almost like cars are designed for it.
Fear and anger are best friends. I’ve always said that this should be the basis for an Inside Out sequel – a Fear and Anger buddy comedy. But no, they made the sequel about about anxiety instead. Boring!1 Surely we’ve had enough films about anxiety from Charlie Kaufman alone. I would love to see an Inside Out movie about anger in particular because I’ve never really understood anger, and as a man of a certain age, I now receive 100% of my emotional education from Pixar films. The first Inside Out does a great job of explaining sadness as a necessary aspect of how we receive comfort and support from other people, and form bonds with them. So why not give anger – another emotion we always think of as negative or harmful – a similar treatment?
Maybe it’s because if you really start to drill down on anger, it’s actually kind of scary, and also stupid. In Inside Out, Anger – both the emotion and the character – is mostly played for laughs. This may the best way to present it in a kid’s movie. Because when anger takes over IRL, the results can be violent and terrifying. Monsters, Inc. actually does a better job of expressing the frightening reality of anger than the Inside Out movies.
Part of the reason I have trouble understanding anger is because it seems like it can be triggered by the dumbest, most trivial shit. It also seems to come from a part of my brain that’s not fully evolved, a vestige of primitive ape-man aggression. I am amazed and ashamed at how angry I can get at my children, especially when they wake me up in the middle of the night.
In a way, this shouldn’t be surprising. I’m only semi-conscious; half-awake and completely confused. The reasoning centre of my brain is still booting up, and I am in grumpy hibernating bear/Hulk Dad mode. I have been wronged, and I am blind with rage. The next thing I know, the kids are in tears, social services have been called and I’m off somewhere thrashing around nude in a river, trying to catch salmon with my mouth.
I’ve come to accept anger as a normal and to some extent healthy part of raising kids. There’s bound to be conflict in any family – sometimes, explosive conflict. How you work through that conflict and reconcile with each other is an important part of learning how to be a person (for me as well as the kids). But I still wish I could keep my cool at all times, because I can’t think of a single instance in my life when getting angry was a helpful thing to do, even if it was justified, even if it got results. I basically regret every single time I’ve been angry.
Although actually, I should differentiate between being angry and expressing it as aggression towards other people. The truth is, I’m low-level angry most of the time. Because how can I not be, when Elon Musk exists? I never regret being angry at Elon Musk. Musk-directed anger is healthy and correct – and it hasn’t resulted in any sort of violence or harm. I’m no Luigi Mangione. But when I blow up at my children because they wake me up at 3AM to ask for a glass of water? That’s not cool, even if it may be understandable.
They say what we call anger is a manifestation of the ‘fight’ response to a source of threat, so in that sense it’s very closely related to fear. (See? The buddy comedy writes itself!) The more acutely we perceive threat, the angrier we get. And I suppose that sense of being threatened hits even harder when it shocks us out of a state of rest, calm, and safety – asleep, for example, or driving in the car: nothing more than your own personal comfy, cozy, climate-controlled white noise machine.2 I guess this is one reason why road rage is – sadly and stupidly – so common, and so scary.3
You pull up onto the interstate – signal, mirror, check the blind spot, and merge. A horn sounds; a moment of panic. There’s a pickup truck speeding past you; it must have been trying to change lanes as you merged, so you didn’t see it, and thought the lane was clear. You cut him off. An easy mistake to make. Sorry fella, I didn’t see you there. But the driver is not so forgiving.
As he passes, he shouts and gestures angrily. He has this look in his eye – a piercing, wolfish, wild-eyed look. He pulls in front of you and slams on the brakes. An act of revenge. He harasses you for about a half a mile, accelerating and braking repeatedly. He is controlling you. He is showing you who’s boss. Or at least, he thinks he is. He is full of sound and fury, signifying nothing but his own mindless, pitiful rage.
Where does the anger go? When you were young, you might have invited it in. You might have taken that man’s rage and thrown it back at him, or crushed it down into a hot little ball and held onto it, to unleash another time, upon another victim. But now? The anger just passes over you, like a gust of wind through open windows. You’ve had your fill of anger, and it no longer interests you. All you can do is marvel at it, and think sheesh, that guy sure is angry, shake your head, pull off the highway, and continue on your journey.
I actually liked Inside Out 2, but suffice to say I am already over-familiar with anxiety.
Driving kids around in the car to get them to sleep is a whole thing (or at least it was in the 80s). Related: falling asleep at the wheel.