If you can make yours work easily,
unlike mine.
I can never remember which way to turn the knob to make it go faster or slower and then have to wait to find out which way I turned it. In the mean time I have fielded 2 questions from the back seat, avoided a car turning into my lane, missed my turn, and then forgot what I was doing in the first place - until the rain comes down harder, and I can't see where I'm going. Then I switch it over to regular until the rain lets up, and the wipers are squeeking, and then I go back to fiddling with the Intermittent Windshield Wipers again.
My first two cars were quite the ancient relics, so when I finally ended up with a cool Toyota Corolla that was "new" enough to have some gadgets on it, I was stoked! I remember showing off my intermittent windshield wipers to those that came to look at my "new" car. I got many laughs at my excitement over that feature, but I truly was excited. I even liked saying the words, "intermittent windshield wipers." I got some strange looks from those who had not endured my first two cars.
Rabbit Trail:
I now drive a Honda Odyssey van - this is my third. Many of us moms drive them, but have you noticed that it seems like they introduced it in the late 90's with the bare bones (when the other Honda's were bursting at the seems with extravagances) only to add them on one year at a time. Come on, Honda, don't play silly games, we are big girls now. Give us the gadgets! I want the cup holders, the temperature inside and out, the door locks (from the front seat), the back-seats to go down easily so I can convert my van into a truck, how about self cleaning carpets or automatic trash dumper? and front seat noise elimination? Ooooooh!How about a stewardess to deliver snacks and a potty!! Got anything to get the gum off the side door where my boys tossed their gum out like Mommy does, but they didn't make it? And I love that commercial where you run water over the car and all the dents come out!! That would be nice for covering up the dent in the bumper that happened the day I was amourall-ing my dash while turning a corner and misjudged the side of the road and ran into a drainage cover. (Embarrassing - to say the least - especially when my oldest says with great delight, "My classmates are gonna get a kick out of that!") Who armour-alls their car while driving????
Back to the topic - sort of - what was I talking about?:
My first car was truly a relic - and not the good kind. Closer to the Pinto or Gremlin kind of relic but a little less notorious. My dad teased me about getting me an army tank and my brother would point out all the cars he thought would be suitable to drive - ugh.
Well, unfortunately for my fragile teenage status, what I ended up with was not far from their teasing jests. My dad lucked out and found a mustard brown 1970 something Ford Valiant. Not exactly your/my dream car, but then again, it did get me from home to school and to my friend's houses and wherever else I could go at that age. It gave me freedom . . . and I could also drive my sisters to and from school (aha, now I know why my parents let me drive!).
As long as I remembered them - Suz and I often got home from high school, took one look at mom and were stopped in our tracks - the deer in the headlights look and remembered that we had left our little sister languishing in junior high late stay. With many giggles, we'd race back out to face the wrath of steaming little sister that we had left at school - again and we would have to endure another trip home trying not to laugh. Oops!
Two and a half years later when Suzanne was old enough to drive, would you believe, my dad found a Second 1970's Ford . . . Valiant. Gotta be fair, ya know. Thankfully he couldn't find a third! To Amy's credit, he found a small yellow station wagon that Amy drove with her head held high - she named it, "The Banana." Kept it spick and span as if it were a mustang and toted her friends all around town - because they would fit in her car rather than in their two and four seaters. She learned character from that car.
Several years into my driving adventures, I went to my best friend's house. One of her brother's friends was there visiting from out of town. (We had both had secret crushes on him, so that makes this all the worse.) He said "Hey," and then glanced out the window and named my car by asking, "do you still drive that little brown turd car?"
http://www.valiant.org/chron.html I tried to find a picture and add it here, but couldn't figure out how to do it. Here is the Valiant site. If you really want to, scan through some of the cool older ones, and then, when you get to the mid 70's, you will see they get quite a bit less desireable (and the sales went down) - there is a nice light blue version (probably NOT the original paint version) that is pretty much what I drove, but in a mustardy light brown color. OK, I've gone back and found a picture I took of one last September when we were vacationing with my Best Friend and her family: Here it is in white:
And here we are, not quite as svelte as we were in high school,
but 2 husbands (1 each) and 6 kids (three each) richer. . .
and we both now drive Honda Odysseys - with stewardesses
(namely ourselves - heaven keep our guardian angels on high alert when we are driving!)
As my boys discuss what cars they want to drive when they get old enough, I tell them stories about the "little brown turd car," and very rarely I see one putting around town and point it out to them. They laugh a little and then say, "Mommy, that's a cool car - if you painted it." Yeah, it's cool now 'cause it is so old - then it was just cheesy and obviously not impressive to those I wanted to impress. But it has given me many laughs and every car since then has been very exciting! My next one was a dream - a blue 1982 Datsun B210 - I just looked it up on the web to see what year it was and someone had labled the picture, "my putrid Datsun b210." Well, I have fonder memories of my second car than that, but unfortunately, because of it's shape, it got named, "The Flea." The Flea has it's own set of stories.
