Coexist

Spatial courtesy is difficult for a lot of people. I am sure you have encountered them. The person that walks into the near empty bathroom and takes the stall or urinal directly next to you even though there are plenty that would give you space and enough illusion of peace to do your business. Then there are the people that do the same thing in the near empty dining area of a restaurant. When a place is mostly empty the last thing most people want to do is be forced to sit next to complete strangers. Especially if those complete strangers have screaming children. Most people want and demand space, but there are always those few people that have never learned to mind their surroundings.

This brings me to this morning while entering a near and surprisingly empty 66. If you are familiar with interstate 66 in Northern Virginia then you know it is rarely ever empty, but as it was this morning I let the hypnosis of routine take over and got lost in my mind. Then, almost immediately after deciding to relax, a car starts trying to merge into me. Not speeding up to get in front of me nor slowing down to get behind me, but attempting to occupy the same space I am currently in. This is confusing because there is no traffic and no need for someone to slowly inch over into a new lane, but there this person was attempting to do just that.



A lack of spatial courtesy. Either that are complete entitlement. Because of the way they were driving I had to slow down. It was either that or allow them to hit my car with us both going 60 MPH. This would have been bad because despite their insistence that two objects can occupy the same space at the same time one of Newton's laws says differently and this would have ended in disaster. After they pulled in front of me I noticed something. They had a bumper sticker that read, "Coexist." Now I don't know if they misunderstood this and thought it meant they should try and merge with another person or if they felt that expressing these humanist ideals gave them the right to be a jerk on the road. It is like the person that does one good dead a day and then figures that absolves them for anything else they may do.

After they had finished cutting me off they proceeded to cross the additional two lanes of traffic and speed on down the road in the left most lane. This isn't an uncommon sight on 66, but for a person that has a bumper sticker that is attempting to express their care for humanity they are showing a complete lack of care for it by being an overly aggressive asshole on the road. Again it could be that they misunderstood the bumper sticker and simply believe it means they should meld themselves with another human and coexist that way instead of wanting all humans to get along or they still believe that people should be separate but equal. That people can coexist on the planet as long as everyone sticks to their designated area.

I can't really speak to this individual's beliefs but the coexist bumper sticker is a common one. If you haven't seen it it looks like this:

Its main purpose is an expression of peace and that people should get along no matter what they believe. Except if they are atheist I guess, but then again I don't know if atheist have a symbol or if they do if it could be formed into one of the letters in coexist. 

There was one other time in my life where I had a prominent and negative encounter with people who had this bumper sticker. It was a married couple who lived below my wife in her apartment building while we were dating. They were terrible at coexisting. They yelled at each other all the time, and couldn't get along. Maybe they had the bumper sticker to be ironic or they felt that the rest of the world should do as they say and not as they do. It was funny, because they both also smoked, and the smoke would seep up through the drains and into the upstairs apartment's bathroom. Meaning that the bathroom door had to be opened or the smell of stale cigarette smoke would be too much to bear. 

My main encounters in life with people telling me to coexist have been with people that want to attempt to run me off the road and a couple that spent the entire day fighting and smoking in front of their children. Perhaps they should read the message they display on their automobiles and take it to heart before telling others what to do, or maybe they can use their car as a car to get from point A to point B and if they want people to coexist and get along and create peace they can do something about it instead of sticking a piece of adhesive to their bumper.