confrontophobic

Duty of the evening: cover a public hearing on a county road speed limit.

In a small town, emotions run mighty high on issues that would seem mighty small in the big city. It's a sticky situation that has arisen a couple of times in the past few years -- the two district schools lie in the very northwest corner of a city. And I mean the very corner. If you park in the western parking lots of the high school, you actually arrive at them via county roads. If you continue west of the schools, you are travelling on county road, and within one mile you pass by the entrances to two separate housing developments -- one more middle-class and one extremely ritzy. You'll also pass by a couple of farms and rural residences, four major deer crossings, and the edge of a wildlife refuge within that mile.

The issue: the speed limit is 30 mph from the school throughout this one mile stretch. Residents of these two housing developments are majority of a group that would like to see the speed limit raised to 40 or 45 mph. It is painfully slow to drive the stretch 30 mph when it is legally a rural area you're passing by farms at a residential rate.

The biggest obstacle, of course, is the school being right there when you enter city land, and that people would not be slowing down enough when they approach those driveways. People already speed excessively. (Actually, the bigger problem is that traffic is insane on the one-mile stretch from the schools east to the interstate exit -- it's more or less the only way out of the area for those visiting all two/three schools, half of the city, and the few hundred residents of these two rural developments. There are no shoulders or turning lanes and garages are built right up to the road because they are lakefront homes trying to maximize small, narrow lots.)

Residents of this in-town stretch claim they're practically killed on a daily basis just getting in and out of their driveways and checking their mailboxes. And they're probably telling the truth, but from my view many of them made their own beds when they chose to live in their tiny lakefront lots on the same road as the schools. Some of them did live there before the schools were built, but not many anymore. Then again, these people in the rural developments knew the speed limits before they moved in, too.

Anyhow, confrontophobia. I had an educated guess that the meeting would be a hot one when I chose to cover it -- the other option being a second public controversial public meeting. And it was darn hot -- a few people calling each other names, the city folk and the development folk more or less the Hatfields and the McCoys and talking out of turn and the commissioners not trying hard enough to keep order.

I was extremely tense by the time the hour was up. I nearly got up and left a few times before the majority of the 50 citizens did (people were still yelling their opinions when the majority got sick of listening and all got up at once as if it was over). I can't deal with people being upset with each other. The fact that they might actually hate each other, that their might be issues out there that can't be resolved ... I don't know what it is. I have never been able to deal with conflict. When I was eight, I couldn't watch "The Wonder Years" because Kevin's parents were always yelling at him, or he'd have an argument with Winnie. "Full House" -- in the final mushy moments each episode, I usually flip the channel not for the mushy factor so much as the confrontation.

This is not normal or right. Confrontation is often necessary and often healthy. Goodness knows Jesus did his share of confronting.