West Seneca, NY—For the most part, Bill Tomlinson, a shift supervisor at the Ford plant in Hamburg has gone through his entire adult life thinking people are fucking assholes. But, Tomlinson is learning that sometimes there can be extenuating circumstances and people are just doing the best they can under trying circumstances.
In the past if someone hesitated for a brief second at a traffic light Tomlinson would be on it. From his Ford F-150XLT he would hurl devastating invectives and blow up them up with his horn. But last week sitting at the red light at Harlem & Seneca in West Seneca, Tomlinson got a taste of his own medicine. Waiting on the light he received a text from his brother informing him their Grandma was ill with Covid. Taking in this information as the light turned green Tomlinson hesitated a half-click and the guy behind him in a black Chevy Silverado (yes, a Silverado) laid on his horn and yelled out his window, “Let’s go, you fucking dummy.”
After flipping off the guy in the Silverado and yelling back that he could go fuck himself Tomlinson started to think about some special moments with his Grandma. Like when she taught him how to tie his shoes and how she defended him when his brother would make fun of him for thinking Donatello was the coolest Ninja Turtle. It was in these searching moments where he started to think about all those people he cussed out and blew up with his horn. Instead of being fucking assholes, maybe they were just getting some heartbreaking news about their grandma’s.
This was a revelation for Tomlinson and caused him to consider all those people he had judged so harshly. Maybe the hot pharmacist at Wegmans really wasn’t a “fucking bitch.” Maybe, when she told him she didn’t like “married guys with dirty fingernails and erectile dysfunction,” she was just being honest. Maybe his son wasn’t a “fucking idiot” for not wanting to go rod & gun club with him. Maybe he really thought the guys at the rod & gun were a bunch of sad losers with no meaningful purpose in life. Maybe every NFL referee wasn’t “a blind motherfucker always trying to screw the Bills.” Maybe they were just calling the game the way they saw it and sometimes got things wrong.
It’s a slow process, but Tomlinson is seeing the world with a new perspective from not judging little yapping dogs as “fucking wastes” to trying to understand the “fucking morons” who don’t consider Led Zeppelin IV the greatest album ever made. But, for as much progress as Tomlinson is making, he remains steadfast about the fucking assholes that drive Chevy Silverado’s (especially the black ones), saying, “Yeah, fuck those assholes, now and always.”
