Car Talk

It's no secret that I love cars. I love cars and I love to drive. I can identify by make & model 99.9% of the cars we see on the road and most of them by year. Headlights in my rearview mirror tell me what kind of car is back there. (Have you SEEN the new Audi headlights? AWESOME!) Jay Leno's car collection makes me green with envy. If I had a squillion dollars I would buy a new car every year. I'm impatiently counting down the years until I can have a fun car again and ditch the mom-mobile. I also may or may not have a reputation as a lead-foot. (A speeding ticket every year? Sometimes twice? MOI? Never happened.)

Nissan 370z? Volvo 370 hard-top convertible? Mini Cooper Turbo S? Jaguar XJ? In other news I am completely delusional.

Husband on the other hand is the only Iranian on the planet who is unwilling to spend obscene amounts of money on a car and thinks vehicles are nothing more than a tool from getting from point A to point B. Just my luck.

A road trip is my idea of the perfect vacation. Obviously. We've gone on enough for that to be apparent - I drove from SEATTLE to AUSTIN, TEXAS and back with three kids by myself! And had fun! I drove from Seattle to Berkeley to Las Vegas and back with two unbroken kids and a kid in a crotch to toes cast and rented wheelchair by myself and had fun! I love driving new routes, exploring new country, finding a ridiculous tourist trap to stop at in the middle of nowhere.

My dream vacation is to drive to Alaska - on the Alcan highway - with my Dad. I want to see where they lived in the Yukon when he was a kid, drive thru places like Chicken, Alaska and see his old high school in Anchorage. Someday we WILL do this!

I drove Marvelous Mom batshit crazy when I had my drivers permit - wanting to go to the grocery store, gas station, random locations anywhere just to get the chance to drive. And I got my drivers license the second I turned 16. When daughter was approaching drivability age I had daydreams about the two of us spending quality time in the car while she learned the fine art of avoiding speed traps. Ahem, I mean driving responsibly. And I can't deny that not having to ferry her all over the damn planet sounded pretty good. While I like to DRIVE, I have yet to master the fine art of being in two places at once so there are some pretty fancy mental gymnastics involved in making sure she and I are both where we need to be all the time.

Daughter hates driving.

Hates.

Driving.

WTF? Whose kid is she? We have a car for her to use all the time - a pretty nice car for a first timer I might add - it's my pre-minivan Acura MDX. We paid for drivers ed classes. And I have to yell and scream and roll on the floor to get her behind the wheel to practice. She turned 16 in October and has failed the written test twice - I swear just to prevent having to get her license and drive by herself.

WHERE DID I GO WRONG?

I'm not pushing it (much) because solo driving is too much of a responsibility for someone to do if they're not confident in their abilities but DAMN. If I hadn't been there when she was born I would swear she isn't my kid.

Luckily Thing 2 is showing signs of being eager to drive and paying attention to car makes and models - at least ONE member of the family will share my passion for all things automotive.

Vroom!