Drive Me Crazy

I don’t drive. It has nothing to do with environmental concerns and everything to do with having lived cityside all my days and never having had any actual need for a licence. Also, it is due to always being able to summon up a man: taxidriver, boyfriend or father, to take the wheel in times of crises. To sum up: I have been pleased to have a perfectly legit excuse no to mind ones units, not to remember the way, and not to know how to stow a trunk. Non ownership of drivers licence is a true ticket to freedom.

However. When it comes to excursions, moving and travel it is a bit of a hassle.

Last night for example, I had to bum a ride with my sister, her husband and their toddler for the 700 kilometer trip to our countryside house, wherefrom I shall soon set forth on a midsummer spree. There will be midnight dips and charred barbeque, mosquiots and foolery… but I am getting ahead of myself. Let me first tell you about last nights ride down the highway of hell.

My sister, her husband and their toddler are a close knit family and I love them to bits. They are generally generous and contented people, a good bunch. Little did I know that while enclosed in a car, they are the monster family for the netherworld. I guess I can’t blame them for the traffic, the flat tyre or the pouring rain. But I can say, that for 6 out of 8 hours trip, there was a constant bickering and vomiting and general unpleasantness. And all I did was stare out the window.

I had expected to be forced to sing for my supper, in a way, by providing car games and gossip and a pretence at interest in financial news to keep all of them entertained in return for my free ride. But instead, I was left to my own devices, plugging in the mp3 and leafing through back issues of Vogue, pretending not to notice the absolutely horrendous, gut wrenching (litteraly) fighting and barfing that was taking place. It did, however, give me time to ponder. As I was transported through the darkening Swedish summer landscape, I got to thinking about other rides I’ve bummed, so to speak, in life.

I remebered my first serious boyfriend, whos hearse-like gargantuan black chevvy pick-up truck blew my fifthteen-year old mind. It was the absolute height of fashion and adulthood. We spent a lot of time in that thing, and his selling it coincided eerily with out breakup, three years later. The relationship, as teen relationships are, was of course a long series of crappy breakups and ridiculous making up. But I do miss the car – have never felt safer than while rolling through the city in a tank.

University, then, was a wirlwind of beat up cars and borrowed cars and generally hazardous cars – very much symbolic of the dating scene at the time. There was also a lot of time spent with a girlfriend, proud owner of a small green puttering thing, in which we would roam the country, smoking out the window and crooning along with Bonnie Raith.

Then there were the summers, with sandy feet up on the dashboards and wet hair sticking to a hot neck, and someone elses shit-for-brains taste in music ruining a perfect moment, and the endless drives in the wrong direction because A just wouldn’t listen when I told him to turn, and the death-ride through Denmark when B insisted he could drive perfectly well with one hand on the phone and one hand on my knee, and the forgotten parking meters and the weird smells and the openings of car-doors with hangers because C lost the key and, a sweet culmination, the cross country trip struck in the backseat with a dog, trying to keep up an even massage of the preassure points of a big slobbering carsick dog. For eight hours. 

By the time I was through this litany of sins and good intentions, I realised that some things change. While the rain was still pouring, the road was still long and I was still a die-hard fan of “Love Me Like a Man” , I no longer smoke, I do know right from left, and I am no longer ok with ALWAYS riding shotgun. While getting chaufeured around in style -or a tin box held together with tape- is lovely when the right person is at the wheel, it is not nice to be dependent on the kindness of the reckless driver, the incompetent ear or the directional fool. For those occasions when no man is on the horizon, I shall get my own bloody car and steer it. Even if the right to toot my own horn hinges on having to haul my own moving and pay insurance and generally do all sorts of unpleasant male things. 

As soon as I find a man willing to teach me.