What Good Examples - First Draft

I've been wanting to write this one ever since it happened to me months ago and finally I've started. This will certainly be one of the songs I want to do for my spoken word/music project. I can't wait to get the time to have my music friends collaborate with and turn this into something.......if I'm lucky. At any rate, I've got to try. Why else write it if I can't do it? Tired of waiting for it to happen, time to make it happen.

You came flying over three lanes hell bent on making it into the exit

Unfortunately I had the audacity to already be in said exit lane

Forced to apply your brakes to merge behind me you voiced your displeasure manually

Hand gestures began to fly and naturally I returned them in kind
Not the best presentation of who I am but hey, when in Rome allow yourself to sink to the lowest common denominator
Why not after all, I’m only human you know
At the bottom of the ramp I stopped at the red light waiting to turn
You came flying in beside me in your minivan hurling curses in my direction before you even screeched to a halt
Then the real fun began
According to you I’m overweight
More than that I’m bald, wear glasses and apparently you don’t much like the way I dress
At least that’s what it sounded like to my ears since my windows were still up
I used body language to let you know how feeble your insults were how little sense they made
That’s when I noticed the little pre-teen sitting next to you
I noticed because she took up your battle cry and started to weigh in on your behalf
You have to ask yourself just how much life experience can someone that young have to use in a battle of the witless like this
Turns out not much
Mostly she had some neck rolling and generally just a loud mouth
Not much gravitas added by her lack of years
In a dream I followed them to their stop then proceeded to jump out of my truck and snap kick her side mirror to shreds
Merely to instruct them on how insulting people in your car isn’t so anonymous and that we are responsible for our actions
Maybe next time they’d be more careful with the words they chose
Maybe next time they wouldn’t throw rude gestures with careless abandon
Maybe next time they’d think twice about behaving so poorly
Maybe………………………..
But then I woke up and realized that even if I were able to talk to them calmly and politely they probably wouldn’t be open to listening, to learning, to becoming better people
They wouldn’t be able to see this great, grandiose example I was trying to show them
More likely they’d call the cops and I’d be the one to get in trouble
I might even get shot at, this is Oklahoma after all
The light turned green and as I started my left turn I glanced quickly into my rearview mirror and saw my son looking at me with questions in his eyes
Man, what good examples we had shown

Written and Published by Don Leach. May not be used without permission from the author.