Slightly Cursed

I never complained about my mangled minivan. With nearly 200,000 miles on it, the green, kidney-shaped clunker was still pretty reliable, if a bit drafty. But that’s what the blankets and chemical hand-warmers were in there for.

So, I was solving the problem of reattaching the bumper to the frame when my husband snuck up behind me. “Maybe we should get a new car.”

“My car’s fine, thanks. Hand me that duct tape.” I shoved the bumper up, holding it in place with my knee. He made no move toward the duct tape. I reached over to grab it myself.

“You’re not using duct tape.” He picked it up and stuffed it in one of his bottomless pockets. They’re like little pocket universes. Need a flashlight? His pocket offers an assortment of them. Looking for a screwdriver? A nice ball of wires? How about an 80GB portable hard drive? I once saw him pull a two liter bottle of Mountain Dew out of his pocket, I swear.

“And this car is not fine; it’s bent,” he said, arching his brow superciliously. He does that a lot. I tried using my x-ray vision to figure out which pocket he hid the tape in.

He reached into another pocket and pulled out a handful of zip ties. Perfect! Several minutes later, my bumper was securely zip-tied to the frame. It was still missing a turn signal assembly, but I could duct tape it back into place later, when I could get to the pockets. The pockets are scary. I was in no hurry.

A few days later we all piled into the van and wobbled to town so the kids could shop for a Mother’s Day gift. They dumped me at Target and took off, supposedly to Meijer. They came back an hour later, driving a beautiful new Toyota Highlander Hybrid.

My daughter pointed out the GPS system in the dash, “Look, Mom! Now we won’t have to keep calling dad to find us when you get lost!” She thinks she’s funny.

I immediately laid down the ground rules: no dirt, no food, and no drinks allowed in my car. No exceptions, even for Pocket Boy. I kept it clean and sparkling, inside and out. I used premium gas. For three whole weeks, I was affectionately known as Mom, the Car Nazi. We recited the Three Unforgettable Rules every time we got into the car. No one dared break them under threat that I’d keep driving them to school in the van.

I could smell their fear and smiled my best shark smile. Our deal was that we were last in and out of carpool, mostly so their friends wouldn’t see my van.

I drove it home light as a feather, and basked in nearly three minutes of unbroken silence before my husband started playing with all of the shiny buttons and knobs and flashy lights.

So a week later, on the way to a kid’s birthday party, I stopped at Speedway to get gas. Leaving my teenager in charge of the others, I walked inside to use the restroom and to get a receipt for my gas.

“Excuse me; are you the lady who owns the hybrid full of kids?” A pair of middle-aged women approached me as I exited the restroom. I nodded apprehensively. It pays to always be wary when you’re me. “That boat out there just hit your car.”

She pointed to a giant pontoon in the parking lot; I sighed. It was on a huge trailer, attached to a ginormous Ford with duallies, shiny mud flaps, and a cow-horn decal.

I ran out the door to my kids, making sure they were all okay; they excitedly shared every detail of the incident. Then I surveyed the damage. My right front fender was munched. The pontoon looked annoyingly unscathed.

Ten minutes later, I had numbers, names, and policy information along with effusive apologies from a very embarrassed man who’d never before driven a boat trailer. It was his maiden voyage; he was taking his new boat home from the lot. The poor guilt-ridden guy admitted to everything, including Hoffa’s disappearance, significantly simplifying the insurance claim.

Then I had to make the call. “Hi.” I took the direct approach. “I broke the car.” Silence. “Everyone is okay.” More silence. I could have explained, but it’s much more fun to torture him sometimes. Besides, he needed the exercise.

“I can’t believe you broke the car already. You haven’t even had it a month!” He was getting worked up.

I thought about letting him rant for a while, but he’s getting old. I worry about the safety of the last of his hair, and his aging heart. So, waiting just long enough that I was sure he’d reached his target heart rate, I finally explained.

“You got hit by a boat? How does that even happen?” He could have tried harder to not choke to death laughing at me.

I figured I’d wait until he was back in town to tell him that I’d hosed the navigation system, thanks to teh internets.

(New rule: No pushing random buttons when hacking your car’s nav system.)

written by vic

Winter sports have never been my thing, basically because it’s cold and I have, um, thermal issues. I do enough damage to myself trying to drag all of my left feet across dry, flat surfaces without tripping over stray molecules of air. Put me anywhere below freezing, and I’ll find the only patch of black ice within a three mile radius.

Growing up in Arizona’s Sun Valley offered few opportunities for things like sledding, ice skating, or skiing. But I have many fond memories of sipping hot chocolate while gazing out the windows at the distant snow-encrusted mountains, snuggled warmly underneath my favorite blanket as temperatures plummeted to the mid-50s.

It was a sunny, December day, 14 years ago, when my then-husband and a college friend of ours finally talked me into going skiing. He’d been an avid, competitive skier for years, and he was excellent.

“Let’s go cross-country skiing. You’ll have a great time.” His eagerness to introduce me to his beloved sport was cute. I had no idea what cross-country skiing was. It sounded taxing. And full of dangerous air molecules.

”I hate the cold.” Especially wet snow. Particularly when it slithers down the inside of your ankle. “And I prefer to avoid hurtling my body down slick surfaces toward large, immovable objects.”

“We’ll stick to flat trails,” countered our friend, Stacey, who was edging toward the “traitor” category. “Mike can take the front, I’ll take the back. You’ll be perfectly safe in the middle.” Didn’t she know that women were supposed to stick together when facing a male adversary?

I pulled my ace. “I’m eight months pregnant. This is not a good idea.” Actually, it was a fantastically bad idea. But, and I’m not sure how it happened or why really, an hour later, trumped and wary, I was crammed into a set of gigantic snow pants standing gingerly on thin strips of fiberglass, holding on to some flimsy looking sticks. Thus I added to the overwhelming evidence that when you’re in your 20 somethingorother’s you should never make life-altering decisions.

True to their promises, we stayed on flat terrain until we’d nearly reached the end of our circuit. By that time, the two of them were itching to race to a hill not far ahead, and they left me and my enormous belly behind, carefully balanced on two thin boards and two flimsy sticks. They promised a quick return.

I snaked along a densely wooded section, carefully keeping my tummy-planet balanced. I broke through the trees expecting to find my husband and my traitor, but found only a broad expanse of snow ahead of me, loaded with eleventy-billion air molecules.

The trail ran closely parallel to a road, dipping sharply toward more trees ahead. Road on one side, a field of pristine snow on other, the trail narrowed, rising several feet above the surrounding terrain. I headed up the trail because, well, there were no couches available.

First time skier that I was, and wielding 30 pounds of enormous, jutting abdomen in front of me (I hadn’t seen my feet in months) it’s not surprising that I missed the hard, icy coating along the top of the rise. My tenuously balanced belly tipped over.

Sliding sideways off the trail, I landed not-quite-vertically in the heavy, wet snow lying beneath the quarter inch of ice crust that covered it. One ski on, one ski off, I was totally unable to move anything beneath my armpits. I still had one ski pole in the snow; I clung to the other one as if it would magically save me.

I tried to use one of my flimsy sticks to dig myself out, which really would have worked better if it had some kind of shovelly thing on the end.

When all else fails, panic!

The two of them were at least a light-year ahead, but I guess they heard me sobbing and crying out for help through the time dilation and came back my way. Once they stopped laughing hysterically, my husband and the traitor dug part of me free, and then hauled the rest of me out of the snow bank. It was a lot like silently popping the cork out of a wine bottle, only without the promise of fun.

We finished the trail with one in front of me and one behind me, just in case. Somehow they survived the death beams and got me into the car and home safe. Where I knew for a fact there was a couch.

I vowed to never ski again. And I didn’t. Until that time some pushy guy friend of mine, who’s now my husband, talked me onto the bunny slope.

written by vic