TAKING TURNS
When I was in kindergarten and even before, I remember people telling me to take turns. If someone was using a toy or a book or a ball or whatever, he or she was enjoined to share it with the others, to take turns using it. It became a part of me, the impulse to share, to take turns became automatic, no longer requiring reinforcement, at a young age. I don't remember any of my schoolmates or playmates acting any differently.
So you can imagine my surprise at the way some people behave today. The concept of sharing seems to have been lost. I see this often, especially on the highways. One example of taking turns occurs everyday when I drive to work: taking turns in merging from two lanes into one. At the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge maze, many lanes merge into five. An increasing number of drivers use this as an occasion to scorn their fellow drivers by desperately trying to keep them from merging. This behavior doesn't even save much, if any, time. By snarling traffic and adding to the stress of driving, I argue it actually adds to travel time. I often have imaginary conversations with these people: Don't you understand that stress, anger, lost time follow from your conduct? Didn't you go to kindergarten?
Contrast this manner of approaching other drivers with taking turns. I notice that if I let a driver ahead of me the driver behind him usually moves behind me and everything goes smoothly. Everyone moves, no one is angry, people even wave to one another in friendly thanks.
Simple taking turns, just as we were taught in kindergarten, turns out to be the best thing to do all these years later. And it doesn't only apply to driving; taking turns helps in offices, for example in using office equipment or in seeking help from co-workers, it helps in hobbies, for example in the use of community tools, it helps in sports, for example in using courts and playground space. In all of these examples, taking turns maximizes the pleasure of all participants and eliminates the stress and hostility which follows alternative behavior.
Take turns. You will make other people happier, you'll save time in the long run and you'll be proud of yourself.
[There's another, somewhat different, sense in which we speak of turns, the notion that everyone gets a turn in life. I'll write about this later under the title "It's My Turn".]
10-16-00
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