Why are people so self absorbed?

I am not perfect, I make mistakes, I can be selfish, inconciderate.... But ya know, sometimes thinking of yourself first is ... well, justified. After all if you don't pamper yourself on occation, who will, right? But day after day I encounter people who believe they are more important than everyone else.

I drive Michelle to school in the mornings, she could ride the bus but that would mean she and I would have to get up 30 minutes earlier and, well getting up at 6:30 is early enough if you ask me. Anyway, we leave the house around 7:00 and even with the Tuesday Morning trash truck impeding our progress, it takes around 12-15 minutes, door to door. We live on the outskirts of the school district so I am guessing no one's drive would be more than 20 minutes tops.

Yesterday, the affore mentioned trashtruck had cars backed up a block or two. The driver was directing cars around him as the oncomming traffic allowed while the men in the back fetched and emptied the containers. I was next in line and the man in back was done with the container he was empying and needed to cross to put it back. I, of course, waved him to cross. The two cars behind me had no intention of being conciderate and passes me. Not only did the city worker have to wait for them to pass but it delayed my that much longer. Never mind the potential for an accident. For as much of a hurry these folks were in, it did not buy them anything, I cought up with them at the next light.

The school has set up a traffic pattern around the school with detour signs to optimize the dropping off of the students so it does not back traffic on the main road and everyone is in and out quickly. Most of us follow the detours and things go smoothly. But there are a couple of folks, and I have seen them most every morning, who, instead of pulling into the parking lot with the rest of us, pull over to the side of the road in front of the school and drop their child off there. It disrupts traffic, never mind puts their child at risk if someone were to rear-end them. But that is OK because they don't have to suffer the inconvienence of waiting in line for 3 minutes....

So after I drop Michelle of the other day I run to the grocery store for some soda on the way to work. Low and behold there are 2 cars sitting in the fire lane. The owners apparently thought that it is OK because they are just running in for one item. What makes it worse is that at 7:30 in the morning the parking lot is all but empty. They saved themselves MAYBE 40 feet of walking each way.

I don't know how many time I have been stopped, in the middle of a street because someone in a car wants to chitchat with some pedestrian or worse yet another car facing the other direction. Do they move when they see me behind them? Maybe half the time....

I won't go on.

I try not and get stressed over things like this, If they want to be Idiots they are gonna be idiots. I shake my head and go on. Maybe I will honk if I am in a bad mood. But it is just getting worse. It just gets under my skin at times.

How can we reverse this trend?