Diary of a Madcap Mama! -- PART 3

The Shirley Diaries: Driving Under the Influence of Laughter

Part 3 - Final Installment

Fast forward to my sixteenth year: I could finally drive! Without The Shirley by my side – to step on the accelerator thinking it was the brake – I did pretty darn good! No teenage wrecks to report, no speeding over speed bumps, no driving over curbs. Okay, there may have been the occasional curb….even now a curb or two will put its chunky foot under my tire and boom, bounce we go! But other than that, driving was a gas!

My dad bought The Shirley a new car and gave me the Nova! Whoo-hoo! I had my own wheels and a license to drive them.

This, however, did not stop The Shirley! Just because I could now drive, didn’t mean I was free to extricate myself from my mom’s healthy need to create laughter out of potentially embarrassing driving situations.

I was a careful driver. This to my mother, meant slow. So, if The Shirley was in a hurry to get somewhere….she insisted on doing the driving! EEK! I’m sure that you can appreciate my sixteen year old dilemma!

Enter boyfriend…we’ll call him Mr. Cool Tool (because at the time I thought he was cool, he used tools to work on cars and, in time, he revealed himself to be a total tool!). Mr. Cool Tool worked at the gas station at the corner. Mr. Cool Tool always waved at me and smiled when I drove by on my way somewhere. Mr. Cool Tool was always on the look out for me to drive by. And yes, sometimes that meant with my mother….at the WHEEL!

One day we were headed towards the mall. The Shirley was in a hurry and insisted on driving. I begged, I pleaded, I stated that we were far safer (from embarrassing situations) with me behind the wheel than her! She tossed her frosted hair, smiled that pretty Shirley smile and vetoed me with the confidence of a mom high on mall shopping.

We were off! We careened up the main boulevard headed for the freeway. The Shirley loved driving on the freeway. No stop signs, no red lights, no speed bumps, nothing but uninterrupted pavement filled with fast moving obstacles (cars!) to zigzag around! What’s not to love? My eight year old sister – The Lydia – was belted and bolted down into the back seat. I was hunkered down – white knuckles clenched down upon the edge of the seat, eyes scanning the road ahead for speed bumps, slow moving cars and people who might recognize me – in the front passenger seat. As we approach the corner where Mr. Cool Tool works, The Shirley starts to dig through her purse with gusto!

“Mother,” I squealed, “What are you doing? Watch the road!” A bead of sweat collected on my furrowed forehead.

The Shirley laughed and said, “I think I forgot my checkbook! I can’t shop without my checkbook.” She continued digging thoroughly through her purse and then said, “Yep, I forgot it. Good thing we’re not too far from home yet.”

With that, The Shirley quickly guided the new, silver Chrysler from the right lane to the left lane…and then proceeded to execute – and by execute, I mean butcher – a left u-turn.

I cringed and tried to press my body firmly, safely, back against the seat as the car began to curl off to the left. I held my breath and looked towards the gas station to see if Mr. Cool Tool was out front. He WAS! Blast!

Mr. Cool Tool looked back at me, smiled and then waved at me. As I weakly lifted my right hand to wave back, pretending that all was well, The Shirley, now fully engaged in making that left u-turn, hooked not one, but TWO (!), left tires over the center median!!! The car took on a lopsided stance reminiscent of the Nova’s previous predicament; only this time we were in MOTION!

June Cleaver never got her tires hooked up on a median!

The Shirley threw her head back and laughed wildly! My sister – The Lydia – sat in the backseat alternately mortified and giggling. My head bobbled like a wobbly dashboard Jesus as I muttered a secret prayer for invisibility! My prayer went unanswered as I looked up and saw that Mr. Cool Tool was bent over in what looked like a seizure. I’m sure it wasn’t a seizure. I’m sure it was laughter….that kind of laughter where you can’t catch your breath and drool lolls out from the sides of your mouth. The kind of laughter where milk will spew out of your nose and your stomach clenches down so tightly that it is sore the next day…the kind of bent over seizure-like laughter that makes everyone else believe that you have lost your simple mind.

Holy magnificent madness, Batman!

“Mother,” I screamed, reeling from the topsy-turvy condition of the Chrysler, “you are up on the curb!”

For some unholy reason, the Chrysler continued around the curb of the median like a train on a rail headed for teenage hell.

The Shirley let go another unbridled laugh and said, “well, we’re already up here, might as well continue!” And she did too…she actually completed the u-turn with both left tires firmly hooked up over the curving curb of the median, until….

SMACK! The car slammed back down onto the pavement with a force that I’m sure shocked the shocks! We rocked, we rolled, we bounced to and fro as The Shirley laughed hysterically while pulling the car back into submission. I hunkered down in my seat and uttered silent curses upon the checkbook for not being in The Shirley’s purse, thereby causing this catastrophe.

I reveled in the desperate hope that there was a slight chance that Mr. Cool Tool would think it was not me, not us, not my mother performing this sloppy, ineffective, half-bidden effort for a u-turn! It was the ‘70s after all and there were lots of silver Chryslers.

Of course Mr. Cool Tool knew it was us. Leave it to say, we didn’t date for long.

I’m sure that, after reading the Shirley Diaries: Driving Under the Influence of Laughter, that you think I’ve made some of this up, or that I’ve embellished, or that I’m in deep therapy! Believe me, I speak the truth….you can’t make this stuff up! I also have a witness…my similarly scarred sister, The Lydia.

I’m sure you may also think that all this driving madness runs in the family and has affected my own driving habits. It has, but not in the way you may think. Being a survivor of The Shirley has actually perfected my driving endeavors. Consequently I have learned to drive like a champ! I can maneuver a mid-sized SUV like a spiffy Italian sports car – expertly avoiding small children, dogs and armadillos – with the finesse of steering a large rodeo horse through a barrel race. I can skillfully traverse speed bumps with gentle grace, secure in my knowledge that they really are lumps of cement designed to slow one down for a reason.

My sister, on the other hand – The Lydia – has become her own personal version of The Shirley. This ‘nut’ fell only so far as the base of the tree and was forced to grow in the shade of The Shirley. With no hungry squirrel to safely carry her off to another yard, The Lydia has racked up miles of her own auto episodes, although not as serious in nature. Yes, The Lydia also has a history rich in comedy of error-type driving events.

What’s the twist? It’s two-fold. Firstly, The Lydia doesn’t toss her head back and cackle hysterically in the wake of her driving perversions. Nope, not at all. The Lydia giggles! Wildly, whacky, passionate giggles of goofiness will spew from her lips as she wipes beads of sweat from her brow in a mock ‘whew, I can’t believe we lived through it’ gesture'. Secondly, The Lydia does have some sense of decorum when it comes to embarrassing driving moments. That is, she will nervously…while giggling with the veracity of a hyena on steroids…look around her to see who was watching, who saw her do that crazy thing.

Meanwhile, The Shirley and her beau of 44 years have retired to the country. When I drive her anywhere she is always prompting me to go faster, telling me, “the speed limit is 70 here!” even though I’m going 68mph. She continues to drive wildly, but now cows as well as people, have to avoid her four-wheeled assault.

I’m certain, however, that tales of The Shirley still float around the Southwest Houston area. Teenagers there probably think tales of The Shirley are just an Urban Legend, designed by parental units to intimidate snipe-y teenagers into behaving like human beings. I can hear the threats from here…. “if you don’t straighten up and fly right, I’ll go Shirley on you, mister! Then we’ll see who’s embarrassed!”

As for me and my sister, we can only laugh – sometimes snorting wine through our nostrils – as we recount the tales of The Shirley. We love to tell them in front of her to get her glorious reactions. She never fails to disappoint as she recoils – laughing loudly, mind you – and claims not to remember this or that.

But, I am happy to report that we have survived. We have laughed uproariously about her and we have put down deep roots and bloomed in the shade of The Shirley!

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