Driving disorders

Little did I know totaling cars would become a competition. At one time, we paid six thousand dollars a year for five cars for our family’s motoring stunts. I still quiver when I open car insurance premiums. Only one car boasted less than a hundred thousand miles, and could top speeds of sixty-five if I leaned forward.

After Coco, daughter number two, flying low in an Oldsmobile Achieva (a noteworthy feat for the cowardly discontinued four-cylinder), chauffeured her younger brother to summer camp, insurance skyrocketed. She intriguingly captured speeding tickets in every state she passed through from California to Idaho.

Our gutless Nissan compact, pre-owned by Crash Corrigan, had a horn that sounded with a muffled wheeze and a cockeyed window washer. It sprayed every window within its perimeter, but never got one drop on its own windshield. Hot Wheelz used it as an attack weapon. (Let me take this opportunity to publically apologize if any of you were ever unsuspecting victims of the aberrant water spritzer.) My son had the car painted brown — about the same brown color as infant diarrhea. My younger daughter, the speed demon, inherited the car when my husband gave Hot Wheelz his old Blazer SUV. She named the ill colored Nissan Poopito.

She had “carisma”. She drove in the slow lane when the car in front of her lost control, spun and hit her head-on — as fiercely as groupies drawn to U2.

Mom had advised me to try the city jail. She swore inmates did body work and charged less. Sure. The car would look fine when I picked it up, but the hubcaps and stereo would be missing, and it’d sport a new license plate.

Then there was the mountain blizzard incident where the same daughter stopped behind some other poor fellow’s accident and the car coming after her didn’t. It ricocheted off her bumper and slammed her into the ambulance.

When I’d called my sister Holly for sympathy, she had none. She dared to say that my kids drove just like I did. No, they didn’t. I conveniently forgot about the smashed Dodge station wagon, Ford, and Rambler. All within six months of being licensed. I’m better now. I just can’t park in structures. I never see those huge steel girders camouflaged in cement.

Even as empty nesters, my husband and I still operate vehicles with an incurable driving disorder. Just recently, I accused my husband of fabricating hydroplaning in the rain to escape ridicule over one accident. Then it happened to me. I slammed on the brakes in a rainstorm. The car skidded to a stop at the mercy of another’s bumper. I hit an insurance agent. She jumped out of her Mercedes, popped open the trunk, and grabbed her $1,000 Nikon 12-megapixel camera.

Nothing worse than having to say cheese on a bad car day.