They say that children grow up imitating their parents, either deliberately or unconsciously. I do know that with driving, both my mother and father have had their influence on me. For example, I tend to think out my itinerary in advance, getting myself strategically in the correct lane sometimes miles down the road...that's my mother speaking to me. My father, although a careful driver, had one particular less praiseworthy influence on me. Picture Ralphie's "old man" in the TV holiday staple movie A Christmas Story, down in the basement cursing endlessly at the furnace...transfer that setting to the road and you have someone reacting to every provocation he perceives from others. And I picked up on it and carry that habit with me...but when I get a passenger in my car I tend to go more into "Uber driver" mode and generally keep my verbal reactions down. Now I can pretend that I'm driving an imaginary passenger in order to work on dampening my verbal reactions to the nincompoops I encounter on the road...but why not instead get an Automatic Passenger, much like the above-pictured Automatic Pilot from the classic 1980 comedy film Airplane! It can be situated in the middle of the back seat, and I can press a button up front which will inflate it into the shape of a comical person much like our friend from the movie...with its presence clearly visible through my rear-view mirror. On the other hand, I could get a poster-sized representation of a passenger and prop it up back there. Or just tape the words "Automatic Passenger" or "Uber Driver" on the dashboard as an instant reminder to behave myself. In case you're wondering about this silly article, I wrote it while making "dignified driving" a personal goal for the next hundred days...no, most likely I'll settle for just pretending I have a passenger with me...
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