Female Driver

New Year’s Resolutions I have accomplished:

     – Get off unemployment
     – Get a real job
     – Submit at least one play to the Samuel French OOB Festival
And now!
     – Submit a “guest commentary” piece to my hometown paper

This isn’t my first appearance in the Record-Bee: In 8th grade I was the school “historian,” and wrote a little weekly piece about what was going on at the school.  Around Christmas I apparently got bored of seeing my name in print, and I started writing under the pen name Ginger Brett.  I had completely forgotten about this until I was going through some old stuff and found the clippings.  But if there was any doubt, the writing is undeniably mine…you can take that however you want.

I was the historian again during my senior year of high school, when my most noticeable column was about the end-of-the-year school trip that a bunch of the seniors were taking to Mexico.  I casually and thoughtlessly said something about how the drinking age in Mexico is 18 and I wondered whether the parents of all those students had thought of that yet. The next day I was accosted in the halls by tearful girls from the soccer team saying I ruined their senior trip.  I spent the whole morning waiting to be called to the principal’s office and reprimanded.

Now I realize that those girls may have overreacted, just slightly.

My latest column will hopefully not offend anyone. It will be printed in tomorrow’s paper (yes, I asked my parents to save me one), and it’s already available online.  But for your viewing convenience, it’s also right here.

===

FEMALE DRIVER

“I don’t think I’ve ridden in the car with you driving in a long time,” my husband Drew remarked casually the other day on a middle-of-the-day trip to Target.  And it was true; usually whenever we go anywhere I make him drive.  I like sitting in the passenger seat and commenting on things out the window, and I also like not feeling judged for my driving.  Not that he would do that to me.

But I have seen his foot touch the imaginary brake pedal on his side of the car, plenty of times.

“You’re right,” I said, “it has been a while.”

“I forgot how fast you drive.”

What?!  I don’t drive fast.  I drive the speed limit – particularly in places where the speed limit is 35, it kills me to watch those cars all cruise along at 30, all in their individual lanes, not giving me a chance to go around them.  Don’t they know the light’s going to the change and we’re all going to get stuck behind a 4-wheeler?

I put on my left blinker and try to move over so I can turn, but the crazy driver behind me seems intent on edging me out.  I speed up a little and manage to squeeze in.

“Just promise me,” he said, as we turned into the Target parking lot and were faced with 4 speed bumps, “that one day when you have a car seat and a baby in the back seat, you’ll take the speed bumps more gently.”

“Like this?” I asked, slowing to a complete stop in front of one and then very, very carefully guiding the front wheels over, and then the back wheels, both pairs in perfect harmony, and landing back on the ground with barely a thump.  The way I’ve watched the cars in our apartment complex do it when I’m sitting behind them, urging them to “Go, please, just go!”

“Yeah, like that,” he said.  “That’s actually the way people do it when they care about their car.”

Well, I care about my car!  I have been through a lot with this car – it was my first car, I got it for my senior year of high school, and it’s waited for me all the times I’ve been away: my first year of college when we weren’t allowed to have cars, and the three years we lived in New York when it made zero sense to have a car.  Always patiently waiting behind…and then allowing me to drive it the way I drive it when I come home.

On second thought, maybe it’s not patiently waiting.  Maybe it just keeps thinking (hoping?) that this might be the time I don’t come back.

I love you, car.  And I promise to treat you better.

I fulfill the first part of my promise when I finally – finally! – get around to asking Chuck, my father-in-law, to help me with putting on the new windshield wipers my brother gave me for Christmas, and to change the rear left turn signal, which I’ve noticed has been out.

(For how long?  Surely that’s the reason I’ve noticed drivers reluctant to let me merge left.  They weren’t the unrelenting jerks – I was the non-signaling lane-changer.  Sheepish, I tried extra hard to leave lots of room when I merged, between the moment I figured out the problem and the moment I got the light bulb changed.)

When Chuck pulled out the bulb he turned it toward me so I could see how black it was.  “Been out for a long time, hasn’t it?” he asked.

“Um…”  I’m divided between what’s a worse answer, “Yes, quite a while” or “I have no idea.”  I settle for “I guess so.”

He’s very nonjudgmental though, and the rest of the bulb changing passes without incident.  And now I have 4 functioning blinkers and windshield wipers that actually clear everything off the glass, instead of leaving two streaks across my vision.  Which is nice.

Actually, now that that’s done, it’ll probably stop raining in the Bay Area.  When this week brings spring and sunny weather, you can thank me!  And Chuck of course.