Auto Adventures
Auto Adventures

"I'm dwivin' in my car, I twurn on the wadio" Elmer Fudd

I learned to drive in a cemetary. Seriously. Down the road from where I lived was a cemetary so huge it had its own roads. My mom would take me there to practice. There weren't any other cars driving around there, and anyone on the cemetary grounds was most likely already dead (and therefore in the ground), so we had nothing to lose.

I'd tool around in my dad's 1981 Chevy Citation, stopping at "intersections," flicking on my turnsignals, and try to impress my mom with my driving skills. I wanted to drive badly. Uh, that didn't come out too well. I just wanted to drive - a lot.

The day I took my driver's test, I was really nervous. My three-point turn wasn't all that great, but my dad thought it time I took the exam. That day, just in case, I wore the shortest shorts I had. A little skin couldn't hurt, right? Hoping, however, that my examiner was a guy - I never thought that maybe it'd be a woman testing me. When I pulled up, an older looking examiner stepped into the car. I noted how he carefully grabbed his crotch as he hoisted himself in beside me. I'm glad he didn't see the look of shock on my sixteen year-old face.

The shorts must've distracted him, because even though I missed a turn signal and, as predicted, my three-point turned sucked, he passed me. I was ecstatic. My dad let me drive the car home that day. And I spent the next two years trying to convince my parents to let me drive it again.

I never had an accident, or a ticket. But for a while we only had one working car (my mom's 1971 Montego sat defunct in our driveway) so they couldn't risk me wrecking the family taxi. Besides that, they'd say, "You need more experience before you can drive it alone." But how could I get the experience when they wouldn't let me drive it?!? Even when we'd go to the mall together, my mom would get behind the wheel instead of giving me my much desired practice. Catch-22. Can't drive without the experience, can't get experience without driving.

I wanted to drive so bad, I'd dream about it. But the weird thing about those dreams - I was always in the back seat. Leaning over the seat back (I dreamed in bench seats back then) grabbing the steering wheel and driving like crazy to avoid a wreck. I never did figure out who was operating the gas pedal in those dreams.

My real driving experience came in college. Since I worked for the college my last three years, I was covered under insurance and could drive college vans. And the cross-country team, unlike the revenue-generating soccer teams, had to drive themselves to meets. So guess who, after little experience driving a tiny Citation, got behind the wheel of an 18 person passenger van?

I learned quickly that a full van, with 18 people and cargo is awfully, terribly, horrifically heavy. It takes an inordinate amount of space to stop, takes forever to get up a hill, and has terrible pick-up. I drove half the team during the entire fall of my senior year and didn't kill a single person or get in any accidents. Well, at least I managed to avoid getting in any accidents. Approaching an intersection one time, my coach, driving the van in front, decided to stop for the changing light at the last minute. I wanted to go through it, and was expecting coach to do the same. Nope. I realized he'd decided to stop, but I was barreling down to the intersection at an enormous rate of speed.

"Everybody, hang on!" I said, loudly but calmly. I pressed on the brakes firmly, but to no avail - it looked as though we would collide. Getting both feet on the brake, I literally stood on it, until we came to a screeching halt a foot behind the lead van. The look of terror on the faces of the kids in that van were very impressive.

And, oh, yeah - I did kill something with a car. Driving my Ford Festiva (what's with my family and crappy cars?) down a country road, a groundhog ran out. "NOOOOOOO!" I screamed at the top of my lungs. (Why? Like the groundhog'd go, "Oh, OK. No problem. I'll just turn around in mid-scurry for you there, ma'am?") Thunk! Thunk! Not one, but both front tires hit him, and he tumbled off the side of the road like a furry tiddly-wink. I felt so horrible, saying "Oh! Oh!" over and over again. I actually turned around and drove back. His little mouth gaped open, and his legs twitched one last time, before I finally drove away. RIP, groundhog.

Recently I was driving alone on an unfamiliar highway. I do like to drive fast, and perhaps being a little tired that morning, shouldn't have been. The on-ramp decided to take a rather sharp curve, and I impulsively yanked the wheel to avoid running off the road. For several terrifying moments, I struggled to control the car as it careened back and forth all over the ramp. I managed to keep the car from flipping over and continued down the highway. Glad that no one had been behind me to see my stupidity. Hysterical laughter welled up inside me in response to my terror. But the sickly feeling of fear sank to my thighs and knees and stayed there a good long time.

One of my most favorite moments in a car came when Bob and I were speeding down a hilly country road in a VW bus. The road bumped and jumped in little hills again and again. That VW bus was a monster, weighing a ton and driving like a loaf of bread. Reading a map, my hands kept dropping down and flying up as we crested and decended each hill. Reading the map was difficult, my arms were flying everywhere. Suddenly the little bumps joined to become one big one, and the bus took off. Our seat belts kept our heads from hitting the roof, but our butts definitely got some air time as the bus jumped off the hill. We sky-ed the bus! Then reality hit - what goes up, y'know - and we crashed back to earth in a jaw-snapping, neck-popping jolt. We proceeded much more slowly after that.

Yesterday, as I drove home from work, I noticed a car to my left. I looked over and in it, two guys were craning their necks, looking over at me. What was up? I'd no idea, so I just waved back nonchalantly, and shrugged my confusion. For several minutes they stayed in pace with me, not passing me, or falling in behind. A sly grin crossed my face. OK, let's play, I thought.

I let them pass me, and followed them for some time. Then I pulled over, hit the gas, and speeding past at 90 mph, gave them a big grin. They took the bait and followed. For the next ten miles or so, we played a game of cat-and-mouse, pass-and-be-passed. It was fun, and a little exhilerating, too. My exit came, I switched on my signal, waved goodbye, and drove up the exit.

As they passed my car, they grinned and waved back. My long boring drive wasn't. It'd been fun.



My Stories
The Art of Being Human

Email: artofbeinghuman@yahoo.com