Friday, January 13, 2012

A Station Wagon Memory

Flashback
Scene: American Fork, Utah. One Amy Egbert (16 year old girl and inexperienced driver) is driving the family vehicle home from her new(ish) job showing her independence and maturity.

I guess there's supposed to be dialogue after you set the scene, but seeing as how I was alone in the car there really wasn't any. I'll just tell you the story instead.

I was driving home from work one day, in the family station wagon (born the same year as me, sporting some awesome wood paneling and crusty seat-belts) thinking I knew everything about driving on the snow.

I figured I lived in Utah so I was probably naturally good at driving in the snow. Besides, the station wagon had to weigh at least 3 tons, and somehow in my 16-year-old girl brain, that made it better in the snow. That much weight must simply crush through the snow and make immediate contact with the road effectively negating the ice and snow.

These were my thoughts until I hit the first stop sign.

I braked exactly as I should have, and it worked. At least for some of us (in the driver's seat) and the front of the car stopped. But the back end of the car didn't get the memo and slid around the rest of us.

I suddenly realized that:
a) I know nothing about driving in the snow.
b) I seriously needed some physics classes.
c) I needed to buy a cell phone so I could call my daddy and have him tell me what to do when my car was turned the wrong way. (The simple answer, "turn around", is significantly less simple when you're driving Noah's Ark and you're a stupid-16-year-old-girl.)

Flash Forward:
Yesterday the sun was shining and the boys were weeping. So I did what any good stir-crazy mother would do. I bundled up my boys and got out the stroller.

The plan was foolproof. "Walk it out kids. We're gonna walk it out." And maybe we'd rub some dirt on it.

And then, in a move that hasn't been seen since the Titanic hit the Iceberg, the front of  the stroller hit the hunka unshoveled ice-snow about 10 minutes before the back of the stroller would have. (Are you getting that a double stroller is long? Ridiculously, unimaginably long? It is....) and the front slid around the back and we were suddenly stuck. Very. Very. Stuck. In a double stroller.

I now have 10 years experience driving in the snow and all I've learned is that you shouldn't do it.

I've spent one day walking the equivalent of a station wagon stroller in the snow, and I've already learned that you shouldn't do it.

On the other hand - the view of the station wagon stroller is significantly more awesome than that in the station wagon.


2 comments:

  1. This is possibly my favorite blog post from you ever! I just spent the last couple minutes (or however long it took me to read this) completely enthralled yet occasionally thinking how clever and funny you are. So thank you for entertaining me. And for having a blog too. :)

    ReplyDelete

Share |