Wave to Jesus

• Lori Palminteri
• Uncategorized
• January 13, 2025

The traffic in Hawaii is atrocious. Honolulu or North Shore traffic made me yearn to be in New York traffic. That’s how bad it is. At least New York traffic moves. Hawaii rush hour is probably the worst part about Hawaii. Unlike New York, though, people are much nicer. The other drivers let you merge. It’s customary to throw a shaka out the window, thanking the other drivers. Hawaii, after-all, was named 2024’s happiest state.

To be honest, I am your typical aggressive New York driver. I wasn’t always. But you kind of have to be, as you learn to adapt to your environment. When learning how to drive, I would enter the car with my dad and he would do a pop quiz before letting me drive.

“What is a car, Lori?” He asked, in a Yoda type fashion, I knew it was not a straight forward question.

“Um. It’s a vehicle. With tires. A steering wheel. An engine.”

“Wrong! It’s a 4000lb killing machine, and every time you are at the wheel, you responsible for not killing people.”

“Sure. Whatever you say.”

Overall, my dad was an excellent driving instructor, though at times a little intense. He used to also cut out articles from the newspaper of awful (sometimes fatal) car crashes and “casually” leave them on the kitchen counter or dining room table to be “accidentally” discovered. Our perpetual reminder that a car was first, a killing machine. Still, while you were behind the wheel, he was patient and kept his cool. This was the opposite of my mom, who, at some point, I refused to practice driving with her at all, as she was too excitable and worsened by already high anxiety.

My older sister AND my younger brother (who wasn’t even supposed to be allowed behind the wheel of a car) were better drivers than me from the start. Even when we were little kids and had one of those little jeeps, Lisa drove around the backyard with ease, as I repetitively drove it into our outgrown pool (in my defense, she is two years older). Both my siblings also seemed to have a natural sense of direction. Whereas I needed a GPS to get to my grandparents house who lived in the same town. If you didn’t know already, there are all different types of intelligence. I knew this from a young age, as my siblings and I all had our varying strengths and weaknesses.

Sometimes, when we were coming back from church, my dad would throw me the keys to drive home. I’d throw them back. I didn’t like driving with the family in the car. Even though dad was a solid driving mentor, mom was incapable of turning off her backseat driving mode, and I also didn’t want to be heckled by my siblings. My, brother, of course, would beg to take the wheel.

It wasn’t until I took an actual driver’s education course where I was the best driver in the car and the instructor often complimented how good I was for a new driver that I thought maybe I didn’t actually suck at driving, my family just made me terribly nervous. Like my sister before me, and my brother after me, I passed my driving test the first try.

A little over a year after I was licensed, I bought my very first car. A 2001 silver Nissan Altima. I loved this car. And I babied it, like it was a corvette. I’d constantly wash the car in the driveway, with pride. If I had friends in my car and they made crumbs or left behind garbage, I’d scold them. Bessy-Lou (my car’s name) wasn’t a killing machine at all to me. She was my best friend, and ticket to freedom.

Still, I was riddled with anxiety and a timid driver. Often, I took long ways home on side roads, avoiding merging onto main highways. For this, I received more ridicule from my siblings. Comedy changed all of this. I was a mere 20 years old when I first tried stand up. I quickly became enamored with the art craft, and a year later, I was driving all over to open mics. Before long, I was doing gigs in New Jersey and Connecticut. There was no avoiding main roads. Being forced on the road all the time, I adapted to my environment and became fearless, if not aggressive, behind the wheel.

For years, I would curse incessantly behind the wheel. Almost everyone else behind the wheel was “retarded,” “a fucking retard,” “a used asswipe,” “a fucktard,” or a “driver worse than a chimpanzee on crack, who, is also fucking retarded.” Yes, though in college I was praised for being an eloquent writer with a gift for breathing literary beauty into any situation, behind the wheel of a car, I made Roy Kent seem tame.

At some point, I had a revelation and was able to tame my growing road rage. This was years later. I was in heavy traffic trying to get on the GW on my way to a gig. I gave myself plenty of time to get there. I’m notorious for leaving hours early to get to gigs. Furious, I counted the amount of bottles full of pee on the side of the road. But then, I realized, it was a Wednesday, and I wasn’t at my then shitty day job. Instead, I was on my way to do comedy, what I loved beyond anything. A dream career. And that I would rather be stuck in traffic, looking at discarded bottles of pee, on my way to a gig than be in almost any other 9-5 job. Just like that, this frustration left me. It felt almost religious. I had a my pack of CDs with me that I loved (back then, we were still using CDs in cars), and I just blasted my music and sang all the way to the gig. And ever since that day, I’ve been a clearer headed driver.

And so, after returning to New York from Hawaii, I had almost forgotten how mean New York drivers can be. This mean attitude is more contagious than Hawaii’s chill attitude, but I try to be the better person. I’m on my way out to Long Island for a cluster of holiday parties. Traffic is, not surprisingly, terrible.

I used to do these “offensive Christmas Cards” with this life sized baby Jesus statue. I really should bring these back, as they were hilarious (Baby Jesus and I would be smoking, playing cards, getting tattoos, or doing lines of cocaine). As a joke, I decided to bring Baby Jesus to one of my friend parties, because I knew it would disturb them, which is funny to me.

Traffic is slow, and people are without the holiday spirit. Baby Jesus is literally in my passenger seat. I decide, that when someone lets me into a lane, or if someone is an asshole, to open my window, and hang baby Jesus out, shaking him so that it kind of looks like he’s waving. The looks on people’s faces! People, stared, confused. “Is that Jesus?!” Sure is! Wave to Jesus! Tis the reason for the mother fucking season, retards! Hahaha!

This brought me great joy on my ride East. I laughed the whole way, giddy. I even high-fived baby Jesus, despite the traffic.

There’s a lesson to be learned here. And that it’s you all should get life sized baby Jesus’s to put in your car. No, no that’s not it (though I would applaud you for it). It’s that even in our darkest hours, like in bad traffic when we curse the world, if you can find peace in the fact that we live in modern society with these dope cars, or that we listen to music that is literally coming from space, or if you miss someone you can call them from anywhere, or that owning a car or cell phone, or half the things you own, even the richest people a hundred years ago didn’t live as well as the average person does today. If you can bring yourself to that awareness in the doldrums of traffic, for I think you are a little closer to Jesus, and I think, you should wave to him for it.