I’ll Be Your Roundabout

by Ricky Fitzpatrick for The Creative South

The South has weathered many great changes over the centuries…air conditioning, sweet tea coming in plastic jugs, and the slow, inevitable retirement of pay phones. But nothing has tested our collective mettle quite like the modern roundabout.

Now, I am not opposed to progress. I appreciate efficiency as much as the next person. But there’s something uniquely unsettling about driving up to an intersection you’ve known your whole life…a good, honest, four-way stop with a moral backbone…and finding a miniature racetrack where your childhood memories used to be.

The roundabout has arrived, y’all. And it is very sure of itself.

City planners speak of them with the reverence usually reserved for revival preachers and SEC football coaches. “They improve traffic flow,” they say. “They reduce accidents,” they assure us. “They’re intuitive.”

Well, bless their hearts.

There is nothing intuitive about suddenly entering a circle with six other cars, all of whom look just as panicked as you feel. It’s like being dropped into a polite demolition derby where everyone’s trying to merge, exit, and pray at the same time.

In the South, we prefer our roads like we prefer our lives…straightforward, unhurried, and preferably with enough space to slow down and wave at somebody’s mama. So when a roundabout shows up in the middle of a small town, it feels less like an improvement and more like an unexpected pop quiz.

Around here, we take to new ideas the way a cat takes to a bubble bath: cautiously, suspiciously, and with a deep conviction that something’s about to go wrong.

I saw this firsthand last week when I pulled up to our town’s newest roundabout, complete with landscaping, decorative stonework, and a little sign that said “Yield” in a tone that felt more optimistic than realistic. A pickup truck sat at the entrance, engine running, but its driver seemingly frozen in philosophical contemplation.

You could see the questions spinning inside his head: Whose turn is it? Do I go? Do they go? Will I ever escape? Is this how it ends?

Finally, after what must’ve been a full minute of existential dread, he ventured forth, gripping the wheel with both hands like he was wrestling a steer. He went around the circle one and a half times (either from confusion or pure momentum), before boldly exiting back the way he came. I don’t know if that was the correct move, but it was certainly a confident one.

Someone behind him applauded. I don’t know if it helped.

Maybe the roundabout just needs time. Southerners don’t reject change, we simply prefer to sniff it, circle it once or twice, and make sure it’s not going to collapse like a folding table at a family reunion.

And honestly, the roundabout might grow on us. It does have its merits. It keeps traffic moving. It forces us to pay attention. And it provides endless entertainment, watching people negotiate it like they’re defusing a bomb.

But more importantly, it gives us a metaphor.

Life has a funny way of being more circular than we expect. We’re always looping back to old lessons, revisiting familiar struggles, circling decisions we thought we’d made already.

Maybe the roundabout is here to remind us that progress isn’t always a straight line, and that sometimes, the only way forward is to merge, breathe, trust the process, and take the next exit when it comes.