I'm married to a car guy.
I'm talking about is being married to a guy who really, really likes cars. He's from New Jersey. He still dreams about his '57 Chevy.
He really likes cars. Can I emphasize this last point fully enough?
The Chevy was a Bel Air two-door hardtop he owned in high school. This does not symbolize for him the lost innocence of youth, or the dashed hopes of the boy he once was.
This is not about dashed hopes. This is about dashboards.
It's the car he longs to possess once again, not what it represents. When I think about cars and my adolescence, I'm thinking back seats. He's thinking pistons.
No, it's not the same thing.
I remember the words of the song that was playing during my first kiss.
He remembers what the odometer read when he turned seventeen.
(Speaking of songs, did you ever notice that guys like my husband must be running the music business? All these love songs have been written to motor vehicles: "Gonna save all my money/And buy a GTO"; "Little deuce coupe/You don't know what I got"; "Sting little Cobra/Get ready to strike" et cetera ad nauseam. My brother --a thwarted but potential car guy-- and a female friend were having a conversation about this very point. She pointed out that girls grow up singing songs about eternal commitment [e.g. "I Will Follow Him"] while guys sing songs about automobiles. My brother said, all wisdom, "But surely this changes as men mature." "Yeah," she replied, "They learn to make eternal commitments. . . to cars.")
Turns out that guys think TLC means "Taxi and Limousine Commission" while women think it means "Tender Loving Care." It means both, of course, but not at the same time.
I'm not claiming that men are incapable of deep emotions--please don't misunderstand--but I honestly do know men who can remember the year of an important event in their lives only by remembering what car they were driving when this event occurred. For example, I ask my friend Joe how long he's been living in Madison. Joe, an otherwise bright individual, muses "Let's see. . .I was driving the VW bus. . .18 years."
At a reunion, I ask a friend from high school how long he's been separated. He frowns, concerned with getting the chronology right: "I don't know, really. Things started to fall apart while I was driving the Mustang, but she didn't move out until after I bought the Seville." It seems that women often divide up chunks of their lives by who they were seeing, men by what they were driving.
Okay, so maybe I was the oldest living American not to have a license. Where I grew up, cars weren't essential. In Brooklyn, we walked everywhere or took the bus. In Manhattan I lived two blocks from the best bakery on earth and only four buildings from the biggest wine store.
In the city having a car was like having a kid: you had to wake up early, see to it's needs, see if it had a bad night, and make sure it crossed the street safely. Who needed it?
I realized after living for two years in Storrs, CT, however, that if I didn't learn to drive I'd soon be foraging for nuts and berries and not for health of it. I also realized that without a license as identification, I couldn't get a check accepted at any store to save my life. Salesclerks looked at me as if I had just been released from the state penitentiary. They often asked me to repeat myself when I said I didn't have a license. So I learned to drive.
It turns out that my husband and I have something profoundly in common. I discovered that I was, without knowing it, a car girl all along. I love driving, I love my car, and I love the girl versions of the car songs. I turn the radio up, put the windows down, and sing along (hey, I'm over 50, remember) to "The Little Old Lady from Pasadena."
Just remember that there's nobody meaner.
Of course I mean that in a nice, TLC sort of way.
