emotions

TAILGATING (part 1)

Have you ever had an emotional response to a situation that didn’t fit the reality in front of you? Most people assume that means something is “wrong” with them.

The following essay, in two parts, is a true account of where those reactions come from and what it actually takes to change them.

 

It was two years ago, while driving towards a tiny nearby village here in Ontario, was when the tailgater caught up to me. He was in a pickup, but not your average pickup. No.

 

You see this truck had been jacked up, a full “Lift Kit” installed, its suspension now high enough to accommodate 45-inch rims and tires. Reminded me a little of the Monster Trucks I took son #1 too when he was just a lad, the kind which always ended with a crash derby.

 

Driver was a young fella, sunglasses, average size, a little smaller than me though that could have been the truck. I know because I could see him in my rearview mirror, “up there” as he came off River Road and roared up behind me. On the road, just my car and his truck, so why so close?

 

Then something made him slow, a tractor attempting to cross fields. No sooner had he gotten past that than he ran right up my ass again. He stayed a car length behind me as we drove along at 50 km per hour for another quarter mile into the town of Osgoode.

 

I could feel the change in my physiology immediately as I went along. When he came up behind me the first time my heart rate went up, clearly, so did my blood pressure, and I surmise my breathing must have changed as well. I track these things so have a modicum of self-awareness.

 

My focus was now narrowed to the road ahead of me with consistent glances into my rearview mirror to assess the threat. Back and forth, eyes front, eyes back, eyes front, eyes back, all while my body adjusted to a danger imposed on me by this selfish prick driving in a most un-Canadian manner, which is to say, impolitely, even illegally.

 

My mind wandered onto scenes of mayhem. Of slamming on my brakes, grabbing the railroad spike I keep in the door (to break through windows if we ever find ourselves sinking into a lake or river in winter after sliding off a road), and running back to smash his window, pulling him out of the truck before he can know what’s happening and filling him in on the spot.

 

Follow this mother fucker! I saw myself telling his battered face.

 

I was in a Hyundai Elantra, Missus beside me in the front, my two children in the back. And instead, since we were now in town, I decided to pull into the gas station ahead to refuel.

 

We were out on one of those leisurely Sunday drives and had just checked out the boat launch across River Road. We planned to come back and do a little fishing together as a family.

 

Today was a scouting trip, a late spring day, sunny, warm, perfect for ice cream. I filled the tank while Missus and kids went into the store. I watched the jacked up pickup truck roll past and go into a driveway, a few doors down from where we were.

 

As I pumped my gas, I found myself imagining knocking on his door, assessing whether I should go to the front or the side, wondering what kind of dog he’d have, a Pit Bull I reckoned.

 

In my head I was replaying scenarios where I neutralized the dog and hammered the tailgating punk. I remember shaking my head to clear it but still the images came. Over and over again.

 

Missus and kids had their ice cream, I passed on the treats, and we got underway. As we drove slowly by his house I looked over and cased the place to match my fantasies.

 

I saw the disadvantage of the front entrance — up those steps and in full view of anyone on the road or walking by — and assessed the driveway and located the side door as we rolled on by, checking for windows in the house next door, noticing how the rear garage blocked the view of his driveway from houses behind on the next block…

 

Of course, Missus and the kids had no idea what was on my mind. I’m sure I commented pleasantly enough to fit the moment. “How’s the ice-cream?” I’m sure I said.

 

Past tailgater’s house we drove and basked in the warmth of each other’s company, slowing to notice the Youth Center where the boy sometimes does Lego club with other kids, and driving past where one of my old energy customers operates a kick ass music studio, and slowly but surely the activated nervous system within me began to subside and return to baseline.

 

But it was the contrast, you see.

The Wolf

For background, you have a brain, a brain stem, a spinal column that enervates nerves all the way to your extremities for fight or flight, as well as the internal vagus nerve in the body.

Benjamin Libet in the 1980s showed with brain wave studies how neurons near motor areas activate before you are even aware of your decision to move. I remember thinking then that we are run by the nervous system; conscious awareness is along for the ride.

Grant-Gluek study coordinator for many years, George Vaillant, says this integrated nervous system denies, distorts, and represses inner and/or outer reality to lessen anxiety and depression. Also known as the ego, this is the body-mind infrastructure behind the predictive brain.

I’ve long called the more primal “fight, flight, freeze” part of me the “feed, fuck, kill, run, hide” wolf. It was one thing to allow that part of me out of the shadows when I was alone or in need, another for it to show up automatically and take me over like it did while with my family that day.

There’s no getting rid of the wolf; it’s too useful. But like any dog, it needs training.

 

Truth is, this was not the first episode with tailgating specifically. It had bothered me for a long time; in fact, so long I couldn’t remember when it did not.

I contemplated that a little on the way home. I was sixty-five, and it was likely that tailgating caught my ire for forty or fifty years. Decades of insanity, right there, and always on the edge of full calamity, just waiting to happen.

 

I thought of the time, the early eighties, when I was in the downtown holding cells and a cop stopped by, saying it was about an incident that occurred during afternoon rush hour the year before. The witness had made himself scarce and so, there would be no charges but since he’d been looking for me, out of curiousity the police officer came by to see what I looked like.

I told him I had no idea what he was referring to. The wisdom of the ego at work…

 

And that’s what I still had on my mind that fateful late spring day two years ago. I was with my beautiful woman and our precious children, and yet, my whole being was triggered into a personal war zone once again.

Only I am not the same person I was those years ago. I was once the boy my parents made, but slowly and surely I have been able to claim a life as the man I am today from my own experiences.
Oh, the humility gained from all my numerous humiliations, you could say…

 

I had done much work, attended colleges, universities, learning as much as possible, experiencing what it is to be a good man, giving a shit, practicing breath and self hypnosis while sharing whatever meager talents were bestowed upon me by the heavens while doing my best to make a difference.

 

It was just that tailgating still got the better of me. It’s the intermittent reinforcement I realized. I don’t get tailgated often enough and so, my response survives unattended and intact. Each episode creates a deep learning groove in answer to some calling from the darkness of my psyche.

 

I thought of that all the way home, the length of time occupied by this problem of mine, the way in which it failed to subside despite the years. Other than a direct threat to me or to a member of my family or good friends, tailgaters possessed an on-switch, a sure way to activate my wolf.

 

I knew that despite my thorough analysis and overhaul of my various responses to life this one remained. I had unfinished business with my psyche and, it was time.

________________

I had this in mind the next day, as it just so happens, I found myself once again driving with Missus and our two children. Only this time, we’d taken a rare trip to a local country store together. I say a rare trip only because, while the kids’ and I go there regularly, Missus rarely does.

 

Only this day I turned off one rural road and onto my street only to find the sedan following us turned with us and began to tailgate me immediately.

 

For less than a quarter of a mile I contemplated what to do about this, my eyes flitting from the road ahead to the rearview mirror and back again while my physiology went into its predictable response. When I got past the first few houses but well before arriving at the crest of a hill, I decided to signal suddenly and pull over quickly to let the prick pass us. I’d never tried that before.

 

This he did, and I watched at him going by. Each giving the other some kind of look. He was fifty or so, balding with short hair at the sides, an angular face, stern looking, but a small man and a clearly nervous man. Another one.

 

As he looked at me and I looked at him, I saw only indifference on his face; I don’t care what he saw on mine. He was hunched over his steering wheel, looking agitated, and it seemed to me, driving like an anxious woman. Drive as much as I have and you too will learn to spot the type.

 

With no other cars around I pulled back in behind him, and I watched him race down the road. When I crested the hill I could see how he’d caught up with vehicles farther ahead and tailgated them, his brake lights flashing on and off in the distance as he attempted to hurry them along.

 

But instead of thinking poorly of him, I speculated that he may have had a legit reason for hurrying like he was. Maybe his mother was dying in hospital and he had minutes to get there. Maybe one of his children was sick and he was racing to bring them medicine. Perhaps he was late for work and had been warned that “one more time and your fired,” something that would ruin his family.

 

What allowed me to think this way was that I had pulled over and ceded the road to him. And as soon as I did, the war-like mentality pulled over too. Pulling over meant caging the wolf.

 

Universal Love

Instead, it allowed me to use an old trick I picked up over the years to remain sane during rush hours in various cities while running sales teams out of a fifteen-passenger van.

 

I sent that fucker “universal love.” That’s when you know love exists in the world and is all around at any given time. The trick is to gather up some of that energy and internalize it, breathing it fully so we are filled with love, with universal love.

 

Then, like those cartoon characters on Saturday morning TV, send off that love energy through the fingertips of my hands towards the intended. I looked at my tailgater’s vehicle and thought to myself, “I send you love mother fucker” and I may have even gestured a little with the fingers of my hands through the front windshield while holding the steering wheel.

 

As I sent him love, the possibilities, the dying mother, the sick child, the losing his much-needed job, all these potentials manifested as flashed images before me.

 

Truth is that I have no idea why he was tailgating me, and that’s the promise of it, isn’t it? By sending him love I was using an incompatible behaviour to soothe my agitation because you cannot remain pissed at someone to whom you are also sending love.

See how that works?

Powerful, true and free
cw

©2026 CHRISTOPHER K WALLACE  Advisor to Men™