The Horn

I usually don't like to use the car horn. It's rude. And no one wants to hear it. Doesn't matter, though, 'cause I'm some amalgam of let's-go-right-now and Type A, which is torture for my long-suffering polite Midwestern husband; I must constantly resist the urge or--more likely--wince from guilt the instant my fingers tap the horn. Yet tap they do. But, you know, maybe it's not all bad. Lately I've been thinking about how useful the car horn can be.

Like at work, for instance. OK, not literally. But as much as I feel guilt about deploying the horn, sometimes it can make someone else prioritize moving ahead. Back to the literal. Tonight I was in a line of cars; the car in front of me was just sitting behind a cab poised to make a left. I tapped the horn once to let the car know that I did not want to sit there. The car then drove around the cab. Traffic flowed again.

On a project recently, I was urging an outside vendor to move faster on a task. "Well, I don't know if I can get it done this week..." he said. I gazed at him, letting the silence do the honking. I don't mind being the bad cop with this particular vendor; then one of my colleagues, the good cop, chimed in, "Well, we can probably get by without it." He's the best colleague you could want, and I think there's a lot of value in a good cop. But I wanted him to let me lean on the horn a little. In the end, he did, and it seems to be working. I just want this guy to drive around the cab.