Selective vision

One of my favorite features in my car is the prismatic rear-view mirror. That's the fancy name for the tab on your rear-view that you can flip to reduce the glare from the headlights of the car behind you. Once I get slotted into the spot I'm going to be in for a while the glare from the headlights gets to me. It's compounded by drivers who tailgate and people with LED headlights.

I know I'm going to get someone that will read this (assuming that anyone reads this) and tries to explain to me the practical reason for LED headlights. Even with the specter of that looming let me say that I've been driving long enough to be convinced that the standard headlight does the job sufficiently. This places LED headlights in the same category as loud mufflers, ground effect lights and fake body parts hanging from your trunk lid or trailer hitch. Simply put, they are attempts to draw attention. The occasional rubber hand hanging from a trunk lid does get me to giggle I'll admit. The naughty bits dangling from the bumper hitch, while unintentionally describing the compensation in play for the owner, I just find pathetic.

Tammy and I were talking this morning about how handy I find this mirror. She explained that she doesn't like to use it because of the way it distorts the view. It makes it harder for her to track the vehicles behind her. That's when the thought occurred to me. The rear-view mirror does make a pretty good metaphor for a coping mechanism. It fits in the vein of "wearing rose colored glasses" and "going around with your blinders on". I need to come up with a catchy way to refer to it. Hmm, let's see.

You're sitting in a theatre about to enjoy CSI: The Movie as The Chatterly family sits down behind you. The mom, Janice Chatterly, is on her cell phone talking with her friend Brenda about the pair of 9" heels she just bought. She spent the food budget for a family of 5 on them. Legs crossed, she's absently swinging one of her feet just enough so that her Jimmy Chu taps the back of your seat in a kind of gum smacking rhythm. Tommy (his dad calls him Champ) 7, is on his second tankard of nuke-o-cola and is jumping up and down in his seat while frantically pushing a button on his game boy with a thumb swollen so badly that it has turned fire engine red. Wonderful, angelic, light of the universe Tilly is 3 years old. Her brother has just bumped her elbow and caused the prized double scoop of vanilla fudge ice cream she was promised if she would stop crying in the car to be deposited in her lap. You hear this unfold behind you as the house lights come down. You just need to reach up and "flip the dimmer on your rear view", lean back and enjoy the show.

Hmm, maybe, I dunno. It is that kind of life sometimes though. I was mulling it over in the car this morning and Neal Mccoy came on the mp3 player singing Billy's Got His Beer Goggles On. It's a goofball country song but I'm more than just a bit of a goof so it's on my player. It really did get me to thinking though; it's an extreme version of my mirror. Just as my mirror is an attempt to deaden the glare of the light behind me, for some alcohol is their metaphor come to life.

He'll fall apart when he gets home.

But right now his worries are gone.

Life looks good, good, good.

Billy's got his beer goggles on, hey

I get that. I've had days recently where nothing sounded better than a couple of martinis. Just an hour or two to sit back and let the noise of life get reduced to a tolerable hum. The problem is when the alcohol has worn off and the metaphor breaks down there's no resolution. You find that your boss is still a pain, you really didn't follow the plot of CSI: The Movie and that guy with the LED headlights is still tailgating you. You can keep mixing those drinks or imagining yourself on a quiet beach in the sun but it doesn't solve the ultimate problem.

I haven't seen Avatar yet. I'm not sure I will. I was struck however by the stories of people experiencing depression after seeing the movie. They are fascinated by the beauty of this alien world inhabited by a peace loving people who don't seem to be infected with the idea that pushing another down is an acceptable way of rising up. Realizing that this life will never be like that their "whole life, everything I've done and worked for, lost its meaning". So, for some it would seem, rather than being an escape this movie created a hangover like crash. At least with booze you can get drunk again.

Who doesn't yearn to live in a place where people live in harmony and beauty? I sure do. Sounds like heaven doesn't it?

Don't drive angry! Drive weird!