Driving Me Crazy

We just acquired a new car. Actually, I would have preferred a new washing machine. To tell the absolute truth, what I really wanted was a life membership in a diaper service company, but my husband pointed out that it would be cheaper to toilet train the baby.

I liked our old car. One scratch more or less simply added to its antique charm, so that when someone bumped into me in the Mall I could dismiss it with laughing good grace. I’ve acquired some of my best friends while comparing insurance statistics in the back seats of police cars.

But I have to admit, I had problems with our old car. I took it in for repairs so many times I started to worry about my children. Instead of coming home and playing with their dolls, my daughters swaggered around all day in their overalls, cursing like stevedores, and my son kept taking the hinges off all the kitchen cabinets.

Not that the new car is much better. The mileage on that car is now over 2000, most of it chalked up between my house and the car dealer. The trouble is that the man who waited on you hand and foot, who took you on all day sight-seeing excursions to test-drive the car, and offered lollipops to your children and bones to your dog, turns into a snarling ingrate the minute he has that deed of sale safely under lock and key.

When something goes wrong with that car, he doesn’t know you. Neither does anyone in what his company laughingly calls its service department. They pay a girl enormous sums of money just to intercept your calls and keep you from getting through to anyone who can help you.

By far the biggest problem is that we bought a five-seat car and we are a six-seat family. Trips to the corner grocery store are a nightmare. Out of town excursions are out of the question, which I suspect was my husband’s preconceived plan to get out of visiting my mother. But whenever I complain, he simply offers me a choice: I can either buy a second car or continue to eat three meals a day.

But basically, because he’s a kind-hearted soul, and has an understandable desire to stop my howls of anguish before the neighbors call the police, he finally agreed to let me have the car all day and take the train to the office.

He took the train to work all right, but guess who had to take him to the train station? And at 6:30 in the morning, yet, when every decent human being except my four children was lying safely asleep in her bed!

There was also the question of who got the car at night. It’d be my turn to drive the girls to our canasta game, and he’d take the car, returning in the wee hours with just enough fuel left in the tank to get me halfway to the nearest gas station in the morning.

“But the car is yours,” he’d protest, when I objected.

You bet it’s mine. Mine to wash, and change the tires; mine to fill with gas and oil. Mine to outfit with license plates and insurance policies, and mine to do all the household errands in, that he can no longer do because, “After all, you have the car all day.”

I’d go back to taking the bus, but there’s something too unnerving about watching my kids stare fixedly at the person sitting across the aisle and shriek in voices loud enough to shatter glass, “Mum, is that man a man or a lady?”

There’s no help for it. I’ll simply have to go on, chauffeuring children, bicycles, dogs, neighbors, trees and drainage pipes, while my husband looks askance at every dented fender and gum-filled ashtray.

But I’m plotting my revenge. As soon as I earn my first million, I’m going to buy him a limo and a chauffeur’s cap. Then I’ll back-seat drive him all the way to the funny farm.