Entry for 3 April
2014:
At 9:30 this
morning, the taxi driver arrived to take me to Glasgow Airport for my latest
EFT training gig in the Netherlands. The
streets in Hyndland aren’t very wide and the taxi driver didn’t pull very far
over to the left (he said later that parking is so bad in Hyndland that he always double parks in order to leave the parking spaces for the residents). Suddenly, a red sports car appeared out of nowhere behind
him and couldn’t easily get around him.
There were two young guys in it, and the driver honked loudly and
repeatedly as the taxi man got out of the car to help me with my suitcase. The taxi driver, 60, spectacled, bald and bulky, told the young guy to calm
down. Red sports car driver then rolled
down his window and exploded with a torrent of foul language. The taxi driver told him to wait, whereupon
the young man threatened to get out of his car and punch the older man. The taxi driver looked the young man over, and
said firmly: “I’d like to see you try!”
This produced a further stream of invective, but no action from red
sports car driver other than to back up and begin trying to manoeuvring his
fancy car around the taxi driver’s vintage red Skoda. “I’m going to take your
mirror off,” said the young hothead. “Go
ahead!”, said the taxi driver, knowing that new red sports car had more to lose
by the old Skoda. The young sports car
driver managed to squeeze between the taxi and the row of parked cars without
mishap, and drove somewhat uncertainly off down the street. (I half expected him to pull over and get out of his care, but that didn't happen.)
The taxi driver helped me put my suitcase in the boot, we got in his car
and headed for the airport.
I was left both
bemused and a bit shocked by this surreal event, especially given that it was
only 9:30am, too early for serious drinking, even in Glasgow. For his part, the driver didn’t seem fazed;
he told me that in his youth he used to work security for a night club in the
Glasgow City Centre, and that he’d also been called every name in the book in his
former career managing truck drivers.
It did, however,
leave me thinking about different kinds of anger. Let’s start with the sports car driver: The primary
adaptive response to coming upon someone who’s blocked your way with sloppy
double parking is probably annoyance or irritation; afterall, it is Hyndland,
with its many one way or narrow streets.
You don’t drive in Hyndland without expecting to get stuck briefly behind
someone loading or unloading. (Some
people, like Diane’s former driving instructor, refuse to drive in Hyndland for
just this reason.) So irritation is perfectly understandable and
appropriate.
In contrast, the
young man’s response was not irritation but road rage, the kind of reaction
that leads to escalation and physical violence if answered in kind. It’s impossible to know exactly what was going
on with the young man, but the taxi driver and I both thought that the his reaction
was partly due to his having an audience in the car with him, that is, another
young guy. So was this secondary reactive anger, motivated by some
other prior emotion? For example, it could have been fear at having almost hit
the taxi after trying to race up Novar Drive, or else by shame at loss of face
in front of his friend, or even physical distress from being hung
over. We have no way of knowing which if any of this might have been going on.
But there was
also an element of bullying to the young man’s behavior, that is, instrumental anger, which is displayed
in order to gain power or control over another person by frightening or shaming
them. Finally, the young man’s
over-reaction could have also had an element of primary maladaptive anger to it, so that the taxi driver’s annoying
but minor imposition on the young guy’s “driving space” might have felt something
like: “This is the story of my life;
this kind of thing always happens to me; older people are always getting in my
way and keeping me from living my life, then ignoring me when I complain. I’ve
had it; I’m not putting up with this crap anymore!”
If I had to
guess, I’d say it was a mixture of all these things.
As for the taxi
driver, I have to say that I am quite impressed by his response: He didn’t take
it personally, he didn’t over-react, which might well have led to further
escalation and possibly to physical violence.
But at the same time, he didn’t give ground either: that is, he met the
young man’s attacking language with firm, assertive, protective anger. Beyond
this, his response was mixed with a bit of classically Glaswegian humour. And a strategic therapist would have been impressed
by the taxi driver’s use of paradoxical injunction, a technique that is
particularly effective with people high in psychological reactance (a fancy
word for hating being told what to do).
