Buying your first brand new car ALONE is something you can never duplicate, just like… having your first baby. Fooled you, huh?
Wrangling it on a single mom salary made it more special. Of course, the cop helped.
I’d read in a hand-me-down Reader’s Digest about securing time for myself. Don’t know if driving alone — an achievement not often accomplished by a mother — counted, but it was the best I could do. Without warning I felt impact (similar to the blow I felt when I’d found the magazine, Big Boobs, in Cheezy’s backpack), heard a smashing sound, and lost control of my broken-in Datsun. It spun in a circle, landing on the asphalt in front of a muffler shop. A mechanic ran to me. At that very moment, I understood the importance of Mom’s rule about clean underwear.
“It wasn’t my fault,” I exclaimed as the mechanic motioned for me to roll down a cracked window. Though I may have been speeding slightly, I’d definitely seen a green light at the intersection.
He nodded. But I surmised it was grimmer than a trivial fender-bender when a uniformed officer ran toward my broken station wagon.
How lucky, you’re thinking — a policeman as her witness. “Are you okay?” he asked.
“Yes,” I replied softly, finally getting the whispering thing down.
“I thought my light was green,” the officer said.
That hadn’t sounded right. Wasn’t he supposed to say, I saw the whole thing? It wasn’t your fault.
“How could your light be green when my light was green.” I spoke in my normal tone of voice — loud.
The mechanic heard the policeman and slunk away.
When the police vehicle struck my car on the passenger fender, the chassis shifted left. The side that wasn’t hit buckled. Every window cracked or shattered from the blow. His support group — more police officers — came. They sauntered and circled my car, scowled and whispered to each other as they touched and poked each dent and smashed plate of glass.
About the time I realized the outdated Reader’s Digest article about the value of being in something alone was bunk, one officer pointed. “This damage was already here, right?” The question sounded more like a statement.
Then the blue crew strolled to the front of the car, and glared at the windshield. “That was already cracked,” commented another matter-of-factly.
“No,” I said. I would’ve stuck out my tongue at him if he hadn’t been staring.
The little wagon was dismembered beyond repair. Insurance – the only thing I feared using more than the newest version of Microsoft Windows™. The agent offered me a pittance. Not even enough for a motor scooter and sidecar. Tackling the insurance company head on (so to speak), I used my best weapon — tears and the threat of sending them a child to raise. A large settlement, barely less than I’d shelled out for the aging Datsun, was a substantial down payment for a new Volkswagen Vanagon.
It was beautiful. It could turn on a dime, although travelling uphill unless I sped up first on level ground and leaned forward was not its forte. I should have known by the sticker affixed to the window. Still, we were all in love.
With the new van, short trips turned into adventures. I learned many things in a tent. El Capitan campground is full of bees. And wasps can sting more than one time. Five times, I think, is the exact number. And once they bite, the chances the GAP is allergic to the stings is more than ninety percent. Her face and hands can swell to twice their normal size.
My brood loved to travel. Still do. When I told a friend where a new love interest could go, my younger ones yelled, “I want to go to Tim Buck’s, too.”
Impatience always filtered up to the front of the van. “Are we almost there?”
“No.” I must have answered the same question twenty times in one hour. “Don’t ask again,” I strongly suggested. “We won’t be there until the sun goes down.”
A few miles down the road, Cheezy asked, “Is it almost dark yet?”
Traveling with four children required training, endurance, and lots of roughage. Mom had said roughage kept you “regular.” (Incidentally, roughage has nothing to do with “normal.”)
Each of my kids used this oversized shoebox as a driver’s training vehicle. The GAP’s inexperience (van dent #1) took a heavy toll on my wallet. More dings and gnarled bumpers followed. Picking up the mended vehicle (van dent #2), she managed to bang into a solid steel pickup (van dent #3) in the body shop’s driveway. Her seven months in France as a foreign exchange student turned out to be a bargain compared to her car repair tab.
Before the DMV awarded Hot Wheelz a laminated card enabling him to do stunts in a car only allowed in Bond movies, he turned on the ignition while the transmission rested in first gear. The van jumped, and upon impact, shoved the spare refrigerator into the garage wall. A passing building inspector threatened to issue a fine for installing a built-in appliance without a permit.
As the van accumulated more and more miles, he drove the ragged vehicle. The first time I’d taken him out in the Vanagon, seconds past a surprise “Caution Dip” sign, he’d bounced in the air. He’d let out a startled holler. His head slammed against the van’s ceiling, a height which permitted me to stand erect. From the rearview mirror, I saw him float on an invisible chair. The color paled from his face. “Do it again,” he said, once he caught his breath.
A Vanagon farewell
And he did. Over and over. The virtual shock absorbers were a challenge for his daredevil side. He sped up for dips in the road and did wheelies (admitted years later), flinging backseat passengers into orbit.
I’ll start looking soon for the magic of a new car soon. But nothing will ever be quite as special as that new bronze Volkswagen Vanagon so many years and memories ago.
P.S. I’ll have to ask Hot Wheelz if he feels the same way about his new truck.
Related posts:
- Sunday morning with kids
- List for the doctor
- Long ago in the land of milk and cookies
- Honeymoon mistake
- What’s in your purse?
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Oh Penny, only you could get hit by a Policeman!!