Diary of a Madcap Mama! -- PART 2

The Shirley Diaries: Driving Under the Influence of Laughter

Part 2

Joining the Drama Club turned out to be a major turning point in my young life. Not only because I grew up to be a playwright and a performer, but also because it turned out to be a great evasive maneuver for further embarrassing afterschool pick-ups by The Shirley. Several of the ‘drama kids’ were a year or two older, could drive and had their very own cars! Thus, it was always easy to find an uneventful ride home in a dented Gremlin or pint-sized Pinto. In the few instances that my mom did have to come get me after a late afternoon rehearsal, she would take one of my other friends home too. As I sat in the front seat nervously scanning the road ahead for speed bumps, my theater friends found The Shirley a funny and charming character! A real hoot!

I am certain no one ever referred to June Cleaver as ‘a real hoot’!

At the age of fifteen I was euphoric to receive my driver’s permit. Hooray for me, I would soon be free of The Shirley’s driving dramas! Ah, the ignorance of youth is like a warm, fuzzy, security blanket with the power to protect you from – or smother you with – the truth. My eager entry into the world of driving would only serve to highlight The Shirley’s ability to drive under the influence of laughter.

My dad, a hard working petroleum data engineer – and dare I say, an excellent driver – purchased an older car to get him to and from his vanpool meeting place. (Whether he participated in a vanpool out of self-preservation, ecological or economical preservation, or just because he was too sleepy to be sitting in traffic that early is unclear. But as far as I’m concerned, he deserves applause for his early carpooling efforts.) Dad’s acquisition of an early 1960-something, paint-dulled, turquoise Plymouth Valiant with push button shift control was fascinating to me. You didn’t have to pull the gear shift into drive or reverse, you simply pressed the appropriate button! Okay, the car was twelve to fifteen years old already, but still, push buttons! Very ‘George Jetson’!

June Cleaver would have been suitably impressed.

Since dad had to travel for business every now and again, he would ask The Shirley to start up the Valiant and let it idle a bit, just to keep it running. This was heaven to me! I would beg my mom to let me start the turquoise behemoth and she would agree. To further my driving experience, The Shirley would let me push the reverse button and back the car down the driveway, then push the drive button and inch slowly back up to the Valiant’s parking place in front of the garage door. Freedom, glorious freedom, was on the horizon! I was driving! Well, just up and down the driveway, but still, I was driving! That is, until I was crashing!

One day, with The Shirley laughing nervously in the passenger seat beside me, I slowly pulled the turquoise Valiant back into its parking place in front of the garage door. Foot firmly on the brake, I turned to mom and asked if we could back it out just one more time. She laughed apprehensively and said okay. I gently stepped on the gas pedal and slowly – very, very slowly – we inched forward. Instantly realizing we were still in drive, rather than the necessary reverse, I started to lift my foot from the accelerator and was going to place it firmly on the brake. But before I could fully execute the maneuver The Shirley simultaneously gasped and leapt over from her side of the bench seat at lightning speed! A shrieking noise that sounded something like a high-pitched laugh and a bit like a dying crane gurgled out of The Shirley’s throat and bloodied my eardrums! She urgently, and brutally, slammed her tennis-shoed foot down upon my nakedly-sandaled one, trapping my perfectly painted pink toenails between the gas pedal and her foot! Our feet mated in mutual madness – my right foot trying desperately to escape the assault and withdraw to the brake pedal, her left foot pressing down still harder – as they plunged downwards onto the anxious accelerator which, of course, hurtled us into the closed garage door!

Crash, bang, boom! Luckily, the garage door was down and saved us from lurching into the relatively empty garage where we could have run over an innocent roller skate…or a ball…or a kite!

And so, there we sat for a moment, me with a crushed right foot and bleeding ears. The Shirley with an un-Shirley like scowl. I gawked at her in horrified shock. She gazed at me in flustered disbelief. The brave Valiant, motor still humming, patiently awaited my push-button instructions. The garage door was bowed in like a clumsy actor taking a curtain call after a bad performance.

And then something truly amazing happened! The Shirley accused me of wrecking the car!

The Shirley gave a nervous little laugh, then said, “CHERYL! I can’t believe you rammed the car into the garage door!”

WHAT?

I wailed back ferociously, “MOTHER! YOU rammed the car into the garage door! And I think you broke my foot!”

The Shirley replied smartly, “I was stepping on the brake! YOU had it in the wrong gear!”

I huffed, as I pushed the park button, “YOU were stepping on MY FOOT! And you were stepping on the accelerator, not the brake!”

I hoisted my dying right foot into my lap and rubbed at the bright red skin. I looked more closely at my foot and saw that it now had the imprint of the bottom of The Shirley’s tennis shoe stamped across the top. Wavy lines with a big 7 for the shoe size decorated the skin on my foot like a tattoo! That was not going to look pretty on the beach.

The Valiant, being made from steel – because that’s what they used to build cars out of, kiddies! – was unharmed in the fiasco. The garage door, however, had to be replaced. I think dad had some kind of fantastic insurance that magically took care of all accidents involving The Shirley.

This incident – now famous in our family as The Day Cheryl Rammed the Old Valiant into the Garage Door (whatever!) – was only the beginning of what The Shirley had up her sleeve!

(To be gloriously continued…)

© June/2008 by C. D. Duffin
All Rights Reserved – Used by Permission
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