It was back when I was early married, and we were commuting out of San Francisco in the Corvair, so it couldn’t have been later than the mid-1970s. Those were the old days, when bridge tolls were all paid in cash, so if you wanted you could hand the tolltaker double the fare and be the anonymous payer for the folks in the car behind you (who then broke speed laws catching up to you so they could smile and wave thanks). It was so long ago that people didn’t have phones with them, or personal music players, or use car air conditioning much. In other words, on a nice day they drove with their windows open, and it was possible to hear shouted comments and relate to the other vehicles as if they contained persons.

We were navigating around the old Transbay Terminal on our way to the Beale St. ramp to the Bay Bridge. That meant crawling up Fremont from Howard to Mission before waiting to turn right on Mission to line up for the final right that would put the car on the desired street.

Fremont was a mess. It was always chaotic at that afternoon hour; several lanes of traffic were narrowing to two toward Market, and all of us waiting to make the right turn had to insert our maneuver between crosswalks of pedestrians. Total confusion. Fraying tempers.

It was a temperate afternoon. I’ll never forget how that one driver took the initiative to guide us all. He was behind us and to the left. He opened his car door and stood on what would have been the running board if his vehicle were older. He raised a strong deep voice and yelled out to us through a smile: “People! It’s easy! Make like a zipper!”

I looked around. He was dark-skinned and handsome. I think the entire block laughed.

Of course he was right. And he made me notice something. For all the complaints we voice about how stupid and incompetent and self-destructive people can be, is anyone noticing what a good job we do at NOT running into one another?