I’m a bad driver. I admit it. I am safe when I have kids in the car and I happily drive on field trips, but I definitely do not need to take on a second career as a cross country truck driver. Perhaps “bad” is the wrong term. “Unlucky” is better, and I come by it honestly. My parents had to replace the garage door after my father backed his truck into it three different times. He said it was my mother’s fault for leaving the garage door down. Damn crazy woman! What was she thinking leaving the garage door down? Who does that?
My mother has two speeds – 80 and 10. There is no in between. She lives in a beautiful condo on the beach in Daytona Beach, Florida. I can just see her revving the engine of that Cadillac at a red stoplight and looking at the sports car next to her. She drives herself and all her buddies to bridge once a week. Oh to be a fly on the wall of that 20 foot sedan….
I have plenty memories of driving my mother’s Cadillacs. She gets a new one every few years or so, but I was 14 when she got her first one. I had a learner’s permit and my parents and I were driving back from Atlanta when they decided to let me test out my interstate driving skills. Somewhere about the Georgia/Alabama state line they both fell asleep. I was doing great on the interstate, but Birmingham snuck up on me while they were still dozing. I am all of fourteen driving in lunch hour traffic in my mother’s new caddy. I looked like that damn little person on Fantasy Island driving that 12 person golf cart.
I was doing a great job traveling through the traffic and knew what exit I needed to take. My mother realized this a few minutes after she woke up and screamed, “Oh Shit Melanie Ann!” . I took my exit with ease but realized I had never merged into traffic in any of my lessons. I was gun shy until my father bellowed “Merge, Damnit, Merge” from the backseat. I put on my blinker and hoped for the best.
A few years and Cadillacs later, I was home from college for Christmas break. We were driving to Nashville for a convention. All my parents could talk about was listening to the Mississippi State football game on the radio during the drive. These two were fanatical about Mississippi State athletics. I decided to be the good daughter and take the caddy through the car wash before we were scheduled to leave for Nashville since my parents had been experiencing some health and family issues. I took it to the drive through car wash in town and was blaring the radio while pulling into the stall with all the fuzzy wheels and scrubbing brushes. I heard a god awful noise and turned off the radio. Shit Shit Shit was all I could think about so I put the land yacht in gear and ramped it out of the car wash.
I did a quick inspection of the car and found nothing wrong. I could hear my father bitching in my mind about how expensive the replacement parts on mom’s “glorified Buick” were, so I was relieved momentarily. Until I saw the radio antenna on the concrete floor of the car wash about to go down the drain. If they didn’t get to listen to that football game they would kill me! So I did what I had to do.
That car wash beat me to shit. I walked out of there sopping wet, but holding a gnarled, nonworking, power antenna. It was a long silent drive to Nashville with no football that day, except for when my parents would burst into laughter about me getting knocked around by a $5 car wash. I told them to hold it down so I could listen to the game….
thanks for reading, and I hope you feel a little better about yourself.
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