A fascinating pattern developed. Within the narrow scope of acceptable brands, the Ford guys gravitated toward the same beers, the same grocery stores, the same restaurants with goofy crap on the walls. Same with the Chevy guys. While the F-Series crew swigged Coors, took a drag off a Winston and picked a little pork out of their teeth before packing a pinch of Cope, the Silverado gang chucked their Bud can in the bushes and snuffed-out their Marlboro before creating an indistinguishable mix of rib sauce and Kodiak spit on their lower lip. The guys at the Bud bucket were talking about watching the race at Hooter’s the next day; the clan around the Coors cooler was just finishing their plans for the TGI Friday’s gathering.

Have these massive bodies of truck owners been dancing around each other for years? Or, had they picked the rest of their brands around staying as segregated as possible from the loathsome morons driving the other brand of truck? What must an entire life spent making so many choices from so few options, locked into a life course based on the path of 4 generations of men before you, be like? Not a man questioned it. Not a one wondered what the inside of a Toyota was like, or how their tongues would handle a Heineken, or if a few drags of Turkish Gold would produce a level of nicotine nirvana that changes one’s view of the world. Heck, these brands aren’t even reaching very far at all, and they’d be enough to set millions of worlds on tilt.

Just as I was on the brink of a sociological breakthrough, a big bastard named BJ wandered in wearing a way-too-tight black shirt with the genius slogan “I’d Rather Be Cummin’ Than Strokin’” in bright white letters stretched across his belly. A Dodge man was in the yard now. Allegiances were about to be declared. Let the red-faced drunken yelling and fist throwing begin. Then, the answer was so clear: all of the Chevy and Ford and Dodge hostility was fueled by blind hate and fear. These goons needed something to belong to—something that couldn’t tell them they couldn’t belong to it—so they felt some sense of identity though their souls were mostly voids with cancer stick residue and macro-brew foam as a slick lining. They lacked the mental capacity to accept things that are different. Not to do different things, but just to accept them. So they stacked their trucks with Chevy accessories and Ford accessories like the silver hairs on a Gorilla, wildly screamed at each other on the highways or the local Sonic, and came to blows any time they got close enough to do so. They’d never branch out or calm down, because they’d have nothing left if they did. They’d have to get to know themselves, which is the last person they’d ever want to hang out with. And, they could never admit this brand-loyalist BS has been a wasted life path for four generations now, so they push the fifth one right into the same thing. That way, they can at least relate.

Having finally found my answer, I made my next move by harnessing the same sensibility I learned in, oh, elementary school or so: I fled for the airport as fast as I could.

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