So I was driving to the store one night to get ice cream and gravy-flavored potato chips beer and whiskey for a Lord of the Rings marathon a raging kegger. I pulled up to a stop light and waited to zip across Hastings Way. As I eyed the traffic light, I turned up the volume on my car’s factory-installed meticulously-customized sound system so as to rock out with my favorite track on a mix CD I had made over a decade ago the newest awesome music only cool people like. I noticed a couple of cars and a big, blue school bus line up at the traffic light directly across the road from me.

The light turned green.

Like most people who have just narrowly avoided a car accident with one or more idiot drivers, I got huffy. Very huffy. The people I wanted to yell at were well on their way down the road, happily clueless to the rage they’d induced. I felt so helpless.

Since I was trying to get to the other side the road, I began to drive in a straight line. The car opposite me began to drive straight, but swerved left, meaning my right, meaning it pulled right in front of me, meaning I screamed like a trapped wombat and hit the brakes. The jerk was making a left turn. And if that wasn’t enough, the next car did the exact same thing. I honked my little minivan horn. And if all that wasn’t enough, the giant blue school bus also did the exact same thing, sharply cutting the corner to avoid smashing into my sensible family automobile. Again, I honked my horn.

This horn honking ... it did not help.

Like most people who have just narrowly avoided a car accident with one or more idiot drivers, I got huffy. Very huffy. The people I wanted to yell at were well on their way down the road, happily clueless to the rage they’d induced. I felt so helpless. What nerve! What gall! What peevish pretentiousness!

After I stopped screaming dorky insults in my head, I realized I had just witnessed a metaphor for what some people consider to be life in the Chippewa Valley. Of what do I speak? Doing something a certain way simply because it has always been done that way.

Whenever I talk with someone about life around here, this always seems to come up. I’ll go out on a limb and assume this sentiment is shared by people outside our small part of Wisconsin. Heck, I’ll even bet a few people in foreign countries (especially the ones always having revolutions and stuff) feel the same way from time to time. But in the Midwest, people seem to have a reputation of getting stuck in their ways.

You see, the intersection so artfully described above is not used for crossing the highway nearly as much as it is used for turning onto the highway. I assume the lead driver just didn’t think someone would possibly drive straight through the intersection because it doesn’t usually happen. It was outside his reality. The other drivers just followed the car ahead of them.

Anyway, this insightful near-accident got me thinking about people who resist change. My initial reaction to these people is disgust, as if they’re purposely trying to make my life terrible by not trying something new. The issue comes up when I’m discussing public officials and lawmakers. It’s easy to get disgusted with public figures. But I wonder if, more often than not, they’re not resisting change because they dislike it – maybe they just don’t notice when change is possible because they’re so set in their ways. And while this may rank lower on the Disgust-o-Meter, ignorance of opportunities for change is probably a more dangerous habit to possess.

I work with a number of people more than 10 years younger than I am. And lately I’ve had to stop myself from being the “that’s how we’ve always done it” guy. That guy’s kind of a downer. I don’t oppose change, really, but I don’t always seek it out, either. Sometimes I’m the guy cutting off the handsome driver in the other car.

Just because something has always worked doesn’t mean something else couldn’t work better. Maybe there’s a better route to the same Kwik Trip destination. Or maybe there’s a better place to buy ridiculous novelty snacks destination. And hey, just because something didn’t work five years ago, it doesn’t mean it won’t work now, after five years of evolution.

It’s a struggle to remember that. But at the very least, I can find solace in the fact that I haven’t caused a car accident in, like, 10 years.