Jetta-quette

On Saturday, my mother, grandmother and I made a two hour road trip out to beautiful Yorkville, Illinois for a family reunion meeting. The Chicago committee has the pleasure of hosting the bi-annual event this year and is in the final stages of planning the festivities. Because of my work schedule, I've been able unable to attend the meetings and therefore felt obligated to attend this one in spite of the fact that I had a feeling it would consume much of my beloved day off.

The three of us met at my grandmother's house, I parked my adorable Jetta on the skirt of my grandmother's garage and we piled into my mother's Camry. My nervous stomach almost prevented me from agreeing to leave Java the Jetta in the alley unattended, but the thought of putting all those miles on her made the decision slightly easier. I tucked her passenger side mirror inward so that I could get as close to the garage door as possible and did my best to make sure that she was securely parked off the alley so that she didn't get ticketed. I set her alarm and hoped for the best. I thought to myself as I walked away, "Jetta's are the least stolen car in American. It's not like I'm parking a Honda Civic in the ghetto."

After several minutes on the expressway, we hit traffic. My mother is typically a very good and very aggressive driver and I'm used to her whipping in and out of lanes and using her infamous "lead foot" to speed past those she refers to as "slow pokes". This morning, however, she had just gotten off of work and was reaching the point of complete exhaustion. The following incident I blame solely on her state of mind: while creeping along with the flow of traffic, we were suddenly cut off by a little, white Jetta. She yelled out in annoyance and frustration. My reaction was to giggle and tell her, "you're just mad that you didn't get in there". My chest puffed out and I told her that, "that's what you do when you have a Jetta."

I thought about that incident for a while afterwards and it reinforced my theory about Jetta owners. I've been cut off by a lot of cars on the expressway; cars that were faster or bigger, but never by another Jetta. I've come to the conclusion that there's an unspoken code of conduct for these kinds of car owners. If we see another one trying to switch lanes, we slow down or move to let them in. We never cut each other off, we never try to outrun each other. We're respectful of one another and, in a word, have Jetta-quette; our own rules in an unwritten book of etiquette on how to behave when we encounter other Jetta drivers.

I'm convinced that if we had been in my car, that never would have happened.