Good Citizenship

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Earlier this year, I made a sort of early New Year’s Resolution to drive no faster than the speed limit. I have a lead foot, you see, and all too often look down to find I’m going way too many miles over the limit. It’s the major reason I use cruise control almost obsess­ively, including in the city. Before, I set it at the speed limit plus 10%, but now I set it at exactly the speed limit.

One of the nicest parts of this policy is that I rarely have to overtake someone going my way on the highway. To the contrary, on my way back from Nevada on Sunday, I often found myself being overtaken.

Because I consider overtaking to be the moment when I am in most danger of having an accident, I always try to pull to the right to give the driver of the car behind me as good a look at oncoming cars as possible. Then, when they pull out to pass, I tap the brake and slow down until they pull back in front of me before I re-engage the cruise control.

Now, this doesn’t seem like a very big deal to me. It’s just one of those things I do as a matter of course. But the other drivers often seem flummoxed by it. Even though I pull over, they still ride the center of the road to peer around me. If I touch the brakes too soon and they can see the brake lights go on, they slow down, too, which defeats the whole purpose. Afterwards, however, many of them give me a big wave of thanks.

What I find interesting is that I’ve almost never seen any other driver do either part of it.

When I was a child, I often read stories with a “do unto others” theme. None of the stories involved large acts. I remember one in which a boy and his uncle were traveling on a train and the uncle showed the boy that he should wipe down the sink in the toilet so it would be clean for the next traveler’s use. All these stories could also be said to fall under the heading of good citizenship.

In high school, I took courses in both the United States and Missouri constitutions. In both of them, we learned about voting and free speech, the right to assemble and freedom of religion. We learned how each branch of the government operated and what departments did what.

But none of that is nearly as important as the little things we all can do to make life easier for one another.
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