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Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday. My name is Darrell Darnell, I need to hurry up and get back to Hawaii because I just ate the last of my pineapple candy, and I believe that if you aren’t learning, you aren’t living. In today’s episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday I share another story about my experience in Hawaii.
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What I Learned Yesterday:
We are a busy people. Life fills up with stuff and overflows with the rush of going from place to place, responsibility to responsibility. It’s difficult to find a time of peace and quiet. When I was a kid I would watch reruns of the Andy Griffith Show. I don’t know if life ever was truly that simple, but I’d like to think it was.
Before we headed out for our Hawaiian vacation, I spent some time researching various things about Hawaii in general and Oahu, the island we would be on. I came across an article from the Huffington Post called “11 Things That Are Weirdly Missing In Hawaii…And What They Can Teach You.” Here’s a brief rundown of the 11 things.
An ethnic majority
Jaywalking
Billboards
Snakes
License plates from other states
Daylight savings time
Voter turnout
Mosquitos
Car horns
RVs and Mobile Homes
Megabanks
I found the items on the list to be very interesting. I couldn’t imagine a place without mosquitoes or snakes, but the thought of a place without those things does indeed sound like paradise. Although the article pointed out that there are mosquitoes in some of the more inland areas where the trade winds can’t blow them away and there are a few snakes that have been brought from other areas of the world. Still, both creatures are so rare that they might as well not be there.
I read the article when it was published back in April and didn’t really give it much thought afterward. In fact, I don’t know if I would have remembered it at all except that on one of our last days on the island, I heard a car horn. When I heard the horn I was reminded of the Huffington Post article and I realized that it was the first car horn I’d heard the entire time we’d been there.
I’ve visited other places like New York, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and even my local small town of Edmond, OK. Car horns are not weirdly missing in those places. I think that of any city I’ve ever visited, New York City is the worst when it comes to using car horns.
Here’s a situation that happened in Hawaii. As I tell the story, imagine how things would have gone if this would have happened in your city.
On the day we took the tour of LOST filming locations we were all loaded into 3 busses. The busses were typical charter busses that hold 50-60 people. As the tour wound down we were taken down a very narrow two lane road. The road had almost no shoulder and there were a lot of residences along the road. This road was not built with a tour bus in mind.
The bus poked along slowly. I’m not sure if it was so that we could snap pictures or so that the driver could more easily navigate the twisting path. At one point the road formed a hairpin turn that was cut through thick jungle. Any traffic coming from the opposite direction had no idea that a bus was approaching.
Furthermore, the turn was so tight and the road was so narrow, that it was impossible for the driver to keep the bus in his lane. He needed all of our lane, part of the shoulder, and part of the other lane in order to make the turn.
Sure enough, as fate would have it, another car came upon the turn just as our driver was trying to make the turn. Here’s what happened next.
The driver of the other car stopped and waved on the bus. As the bus inched forward, the driver made every effort to avoid the other car. I had the perfect view of the situation as the driver had stopped right out my window. There was less than 6 inches between the bus and the other car.
Realizing that he was about to get hit, the other driver put his car into reverse and backed up a bit. The bus creeped forward and it soon became clear that the car was still in harms way. The driver put his car in reverse again and backed up even further. Quite a bit further. This time the bus driver was able to complete the turn.
As the bus driver passed the other car, he slowed down. Both men opened their windows and exchanged a friendly Aloaha and made the Shaka hand gesture. The bus driver apologized and thanked the other driver but the other driver just shook it off. It was no big deal. He made no indication that he had been inconvenienced in any way.
At the time that it happened, I remember being really impressed by the attitude of the oncoming driver. However, it wasn’t until I heard the car horn a couple of days later that I realized that the driver was very likely a typical example of Hawaiian drivers.
Are they all going someplace? Sure. Do they have schedules? Yes, most of them probably do. However, somehow, Hawaiians have managed to keep a perspective that most of us lost sight of long ago when television shows were still in black and white.
What is it? It’s okay to slow down. Most of the things we get upset about are stupid. We yell at other drivers and honk our horns for reasons that don’t matter. We don’t want to slow down and let someone pass or yield to to another driver because we have things to do and places to go. We allow ourselves to get red in the face and our voices to raise because we are more interested in people looking out for our best interest than we are about looking out for the best interest of others.
There was a day and time when putting others before yourself was just the way things were done. We took time to wave and smile and offer a heartfelt, “How’s the family?”
Here’s what I learned.
Even in Oklahoma where we have a friendly group of people and take life a bit slower than other parts of the world, we’re all too guilty of putting appointments and schedules and things that matter to us before the needs and considerations of others.
Here’s a challenge for us all this week. As we’re driving our cars, navigating traffic, and encountering others, let’s think of them first. Ease off the accelerator and let that driver go in front of us. Let’s keep our hands off our horns. Let’s loosen up our schedules and allow time to breathe. Let’s enjoy the life around us. After all, we only live once, and there are no refunds.
I’m Darrell Darnell and this has been stuff I learned yesterday.
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