Have you ever gone to a friend of yours – someone you trust to care for and embrace you in your time of need – and bitched about that bad day, as unextraordinary as it might have been? You groggily stumble over to their desk/cubicle/house or lethargically shoot them a text message and talk about the excruciatingly verbose and unnecessary lecture you just received about the company’s policy on section whatever-dot-whatever in the procedures for whatever-the-hell-it-was, hoping to receive a little emotional “I got your back, bro” from your friend. I don’t think that’s too much to ask, really.

But, somehow, it apparently is too much to ask, because that asshat of a friend just has to respond with the most annoying that-doesn’t-help-at-all response:

“It could be worse.”

No way? It could be worse? Damn, I hadn’t thought about that. I feel so much better now that you pointed out that my crappy, frustrating day could be even crappier and more frustrating. You’re so right. I could be crippled. Or bald. Or Rachel Maddow/Sarah Palin (take your pick based on your political preferences). You’re always getting me to look on the bright side of things, friend.

Well...

Except that’s not at all how you feel, because that’s not at all a helpful thing for someone to say when you just want to have a bit of an innocent bitchfest about something that anyone would call obnoxious. In fact, it’s rarely ever a helpful thing to say. It doesn’t make something crappy better to know that there is something crappier out there. If I just broke one of my legs in a wild break-dancing related accident, it won’t make my leg hurt less if you tell me that I could have broken both of my legs. I still broke my leg you stupid jackass. That still sucks.

If you happen to voice this concern to your mentally inanimate friend, you may receive the following defense:

“It happens to everybody.”

If everyone got kicked in the balls at the same time, that doesn’t make getting kicked in the balls feel good. It’s still a kick to the balls. The fact that it happens to everyone just means that everyone has a pretty legitimate reason to piss and moan, not that they should just shut up about it because “it’s the standard.” If the standard sucks, then complaining about the standard becomes the standard.

Think about it. You’ll get it.

Okay, so maybe that’s a little extreme.  Obviously there are worse places in the world than an American freeway at rush hour.  (The back seat on a Greyhound bus comes to mind.)  Can we at least agree that traffic is the most annoying thing in the world?  And yes, I’m putting it above Wanda Sykes, rainy weekends, and middle schoolers in a movie theater.

To say traffic is one of my pet peeves would be like saying that civil liberties were one of Stalin’s pet peeves or that George W. Bush “annoyed” some political science professors.  I hate traffic.  It makes me crazy.  No matter how much I brace for it or plan my trip to account for it, I always end up losing my freaking mind.  I gesture and curse, I rant and rave, I call down fire from heaven.  I go nuts.

I don’t like feeling this way.  The occasional longwinded rant notwithstanding, I consider myself a fairly even-tempered guy.  I’m not prone to fits of rage and I don’t often ponder the ways my temperament might be improved by an automatic weapon.  Traffic makes me do these things.  But why?  Why have six short months in Los Angeles (aka The Julliard School for traffic jams of promise) transformed me from Jeffrey Lebowski into a ball of rage who is perhaps only days away from (a) some serious stomach ulcers and/or (b) pleading guilty to vehicular homicide?  I have some theories.

My first problem with traffic is that it is an inexcusable underutilization of one of the great inventions of human existence: the automobile.  The automobile is a wonder of modern technology.  It allows us to travel at speeds unimaginable even 100 years ago.  Yet there it sits, bumper to bumper with its similarly impotent peers, while lesser modes of transit like bicycles and feet race ahead on nearby pedestrian walkways.  I defy anyone to show me a situation more frustrating, more enraging, more downright tragic than watching an octogenarian in a motorized cart reach your exit before you do.

And my car isn’t just sitting anywhere mind you.  It’s sitting on a freeway. Freeways are to cars what military service is to high school linebackers.  It’s what they were made for.  Sitting in a car that’s parked on an interstate is like starving at a Golden Corral.  You have a machine (your vehicle or your mouth, respectively) which wants to do only one thing (drive, eat) and here it is in the one place where it can experience the fullness of all it was meant to be (an open road, a buffet) and yet it is doing the exact opposite (idling, starving).  Inexcusable.

It is one of the cruel tricks of the universe, and an indictment of traffic’s wickedness, that the only thing more aggravating than being stuck in traffic is to be freed from traffic.  This is because 90% of traffic jams end without explanation.  One moment I’m taking a nap while I roll along at 0.5 mph, and the next I’m cruising at 70 without so much as a construction zone or escaped zoo animal to account for it.

I’m more pissed now than ever.  “WHY?” I shout to the heavens. Why did this have to happen?  To what end?  For what purpose have I been tormented?  It’s not enough that I’m going fast again.  I want answers.  I want to know what greater good was served by my time in gridlock.  I want – alright, I’ll admit it, I want an accident.

Go ahead and call me a terrible person, but don’t tell me you haven’t thought the same thing.  I don’t want anyone to get hurt or killed or anything crazy like that.  I just want to see some good, old-fashioned, drivers-ed-worthy wreckage.  I sacrificed 30 to 90 perfectly good minutes of my 20s.  All I want in return is a Hyundai wrapped around a telephone pole.  Or maybe an 18-wheeler on its side with Hostess products strewn across the asphalt.  Or anything on fire.  Whatever.  I’m not picky.  I ask only that it justify the delay and that it look awesome.

But no.  Nine times out of ten the bottleneck’s origin is more underwhelming than Britney Spears’ acting career.  It’s a stalled vehicle 25 feet off the shoulder.  It’s a puddle.  It’s a curve in the road.  It’s some jackass who hits his breaks for no reason thereby forcing the next 1,000 drivers behind him to hit their breaks at the same spot.  It’s nothing and no one and my precious minutes die in vain – unexplained and unavenged.

I’ll say it one final time, traffic sucks something awful.  I could go on (and on, and on, and on) but, depending on your reading level, I think my five minutes are almost up.

I’ll close with this.

Traffic is a step backward for humanity.  It is the most disagreeable symptom of civilization as well as a compelling argument against it. If I’ve learned anything from The Road, The Book of Eli, or Revelation it’s that freedom from traffic will be the coolest thing about the coming nuclear holocaust.  Will it make the cold, hunger, and roving bands of inbred barbarians worth it?  I couldn’t say.

Am I looking forward to finding out?  You bet.

About the advice you gave me… Look, let me just start by saying that I know you had good intentions. You meant well, and I appreciate your well-meaningness.You’re a good friend/mentor/parent/random acquaintance who asked “how are you” and got way more than you bargained for. I value you as a person and the fact that you cared enough to pull something out of your ass to try to guide me through life. I really do.

But we know what the road to hell is paved with, don’t we? American tax dollars! Just kidding, it’s good intentions like the ones you had. Your advice was not good, and since I’m the kind of ungrateful doucher who criticizes gifts freely given, I am going go critique you so that you can do better next time. Take a seat.

Let’s start with your tone. You see, I’m at a point in my life that some might define as “hopeless,” “disillusioned,” or “on the verge of joining the military.” What I need from you is pure, unadulterated, unfiltered positivity. You’re my cheerleader right now. You don’t have to be stupid or slutty. You just have to be positive. Tell me everything is going to be okay, even if you don’t know that to be true.You’re not an oracle. I know that.  Don’t tell me you don’t know the future. I don’t need to hear that, and we’re focusing on my needs because I’m a selfish bitch.

Too many advice givers make the mistake of thinking that I need to hear that “the real world is a tough place” and that I need to hear a perspective that isn’t “sugar coated.” That’s just back asswards. Life is kicking me repeatedly in the crotch. I don’t need you to tell me that life is hard. I know that very intimately. What makes you think that not sugar coating your advice is going to do me any good? I’ve had tons of sugarless life. My life-glucose level is dangerously low at this point. I need a high-sugar life candy bar to keep me alive. So come on now. Say something positive. Throw out a cliche you read on a bumper sticker or on a Christian bookmark. I really don’t give a damn. You’re my Obama, so give me the false-hope that I need to survive.

And now for your message. I asked you for advice on discerning my purpose in life, and you told me to “get out there and just do something.” What the hell kind of advice is that? Should I deal drugs? Should I move to Vegas and become a male prostitute? Hell, ponzi schemes seem lucrative (thanks for the idea Madoff!), why shouldn’t I do that? I realize I need to do something, I came to you for help figuring out just exactly what that something is. For you to repeat my question to me as an answer just puts me back at square one. Either that or square zero, having been discouraged so much that I lost a damn square. I need those squares right now man. I can’t afford to lose one.

So just for future reference, if someone like me asks you for advice about something and you really don’t have any good advice to give, just say “everything is going to be alright.” Because hey, guess what? It just might be true.