You Are How You Drive

In my premier blog post (look at me, one post in and I'm already a bloghole - who the hell calls it a 'premier'?)...anyway, in my first post, I mentioned that I was going to give my two cents on anything of interest.  I just wanted to leave it open-ended.  Truth be told, my initial blog idea was to write about how you could define someone's personality based on their driving habits, through a sort of daily commuter log.  I drive the hellish highways of New Jersey five days a week so trust me, I could write volumes on the head-scratching shit that goes on out on the asphalt  jungle. So, with the sequel to my first post (sequel?  again...bloghole), my NJ Turnpike Behavioral Analysis model will begin to take shape.



Let's face it, aside from Freud, and a few other psycho-babblers, most of us have no clue as to how the id, ego and super-ego relate to our personalities.  In fact, judging by the obesity issue in this country we probably know a hell of a lot more about Eggos than we do about ego and super-egos.  That's not a knock on Sigmund, or on his contributions to psychotherapists and their self-gratifying studies.  But Freud was born in the mid-19th century, meaning simply that he never had the unrivaled pleasure of a Monday morning commute on the New Jersey Turnpike..during rush hour...just after Labor Day, when school was back in full swing.

When it comes to personality studies, no amount of psychoanalysis could compare.  And with all due respect, when it comes to the study of human behavior, I'll put my Turnpike model up against Rorschach's little inkblot pictures any day of the work week and twice on Sunday - no splotch of ink could ever reveal the depths of anger, hatred, rage, even sympathy and patience that you feel when tailing an 85-year old man doing 35 in a 55 for miles on end down the one-lane, no-passing zone stretch of Route 9.

You know something, I'm going to end this post here.  I really need to expand on this 85-year old man thing so I'm going to pick this up on my next post.