Talking to People 

Hullo. The other week I was driving up towards the Lake District. As I drove along I found myself behind a Police car. You can always tell of course when one of these chaps is on the prowl. All the carefree Porsche, Jaguar and Mercedes owners, who usually roar along the carriageway, like the Star Ship Enterprise, hurrying to get to an engagement in a distant galaxy, suddenly plod along at a humble seventy miles an hour. The whole body of traffic suddenly turned into something resembling a vintage car rally. I was in no particular hurry so this suited me fine. I must have drifted off into a daydream for a few moments, because I found myself overtaking the Police car. As I came along side I remembered my old driving instructors warning, "Never over take a Police car!" It was too late now, so I settled back into the middle lane at a sedate seventy miles an hour. After a little while in which I had been franticly checking and rechecking my speed, the police car over took me. I breathed a sigh of relief. On we drove and then the Policeman moved into the inside lane and fell behind. This was looking better still, maybe he was going to disappear onto one of those little hillocks where they perch by the side of the motorway. Three minutes later he was back behind me with his blue light flashing. I knew I hadn’t been speeding so I was quite intrigued as to why the constable wanted a little chat. I pulled over. Out came the guardian of the law and I wound down my side window. He was not in a friendly mood. "Roll this window right down he barked." Now many years ago a Psychologist told me about something called "Pattern interrupt". This is where you get someone who is angry or violent to "interrupt" their anger as you direct it in another direction. His example was interrupting someone who’s shouting at you with the innocent question, "Wow, where did you get those shoes, they’re great" The fellow is deflected from his anger for a moment and you jump in and apologise for whatever you’ve done wrong. He’s much more likely to forgive, now he’s calmed down. So I responded to his request to roll down my window by warmly saying "Come in officer, sit down." And before he could react I moved the heavy bag from the front seat and opened the door. He went on to explain that he was annoyed that I had been "hogging" the middle lane. But all the anger was gone. So try not letting people turn your anger on, "Pattern Interrupt" and turn their anger off.