I let the inner child out of her room because she PROMISED to behave. But she didn’t. On Friday, I was driving my daughter’s car down the mountain for a conference. I drove 12,000 feet up over the Continental Divide, past Idaho Springs, and down into the bowels of Denver. Suddenly, the traffic was wall to wall. Cars were going well over the speed limit and weaving in and out of tight spaces. It was when the white utility truck tried to cut in front of me that the inner child took charge of our communication. The driver suddenly noticed me, swerved back into his own lane and shrugged his shoulders. He took his hands off the wheel for a few seconds and threw them in the air. My inner child did something I would  never do; she flipped him off.

After the inner child fell into a fit of road rage, I thought about Road Bullies. We label those who make school and work places hostile  as bullies. What about the people on the road who drive too close to you, or the drivers who cut in front of you when you are trying to keep a safe distance between you and the car next car? How about the person who decides s/he has the right of way at a 4 way stop when you are clearly on his or her right and have started to pull into the intersection? These are Road Bullies.

There are no signs on the road that say “Bullying will not be tolerated.” But there should be, as Road Bullies are dangerous people. They create a hostile traveling environment. They indicate a society that has become impatient and impolite, one that puts the lives of others at risk and makes travel unenjoyable. And they invade our personal space (remember the rule of keeping a car length between you and the next car for every 10 miles an hour you’re going? This is the personal space of the road).

What does this have to do with communication? We send a strong message to others by the way we treat them. When we invade the personal space of someone we don’t know, it’s  a sign of dominance and power. When power is perceived as imbalanced, it can create destructive conflict…the kind that releases the inner child in us and causes us to make poor decisions. Luckily, my inner child limited her brief encounter with road rage to putting a finger in the air. I sent her back to her “room” to keep her safe from the Road Bullies,  put on some  Dylan for relaxation and kept my finger securely  wrapped around the steering wheel.