My Macho Car

I drive a macho car. No dainty Lexus or Mercedes with leather for me. I made the move from my green Thunderbird to a 1/2 ton pickup truck when I was in vet school and never looked back. I eventually wore out the truck, which was a company hand me down from my dad, and traded it in when it had over 200,000 miles on it. I left the lot in a shiny new Ford Expedition, which I admit was rather an odd choice, as we had no children at the time. As I'm sure happens more often than people would like to admit, I immediately fell out of love with my new car. I hated the way it handled in the rain, and the last straw was when I called my husband on a trip home from Memphis. I was pulling my horse trailer.

Me: Something's wrong with my truck!
Him: What? Why? What's it doing?
Me: I'm trying to get up this hill. I've got my foot on the floor and the stupid thing won't go any faster.
Him: Pull over and let's swap. Let me drive it for awhile.
Me: Gladly.
Ten miles down the road, he called me back.
Him: There's nothing wrong with your truck.
Me: What? Yes there is!
Him: Nope. You got too much trailer and not enough truck. That's the whole problem.

Then and there, I declared that I would never have another 1/2 ton truck again. Ever. Not long after that, he took me to the Dodge dealership, where I picked out an awesome, slightly used 3/4 ton Dodge 4 wheel drive truck. Four doors, chicken lights, chrome running boards...the only word for that truck was "sexy." I was in love with a vehicle again. More than once, men pulled up next to me and looked shocked when they realized a woman was driving. I had never had a vehicle make me feel so good when I drove it. I felt strong, tough, invincible. I'm still convinced that a small corner of my soul is a teenage boy.
I happily drove my truck, which I nicknamed "Arnold" after the Terminator, back and forth to Tennessee every week to my first job after vet school. It really did attract an inordinate amount of attention from men. Total strangers offered to help load my groceries at Sam's. More than one said something to the effect that they liked to see such a small woman drive such a big truck. (File that away, single ladies. You're welcome.) I didn't even let it bother me when one of the ladies where I worked suggested that as a woman who was a vet with short hair, driving a truck like that made me have a "lesbian" vibe. I'm not sure where that came from, because I never had any women flirt with me when I drove by. At least not that I knew about.
But alas, my love affair with Arnold ended when I got pregnant with twins. A friend who was also a MOM informed me that there was no way I could possibly survive as the mother of two babies without a Suburban. So I reluctantly passed Arnold on to my husband and became the proud owner of a "family car."
As luck would have it, my upgrade was just the opposite. It was in the shop no less than seven times during my pregnancy, once even stranding me on the side of the road. It HAD to go.
As is often the case when you make decisions in a hormone based fog, my next car decision was a definite mistake. We traded the Suburban for a Dodge Charger, which barely had a backseat. I did LOVE to drive it, though. One trip to Texas with our babies and we realized we had really messed up. My husband ended up driving it on his commute to Memphis until we sold it.
Once again, I found myself driving a Suburban, this time purchased from a doctor who was going to trade it in on a new one. "Old Blue" was a great car. Everything that you could possibly do to a car had already been done to it by the previous owner's four kids. When my girls spilled something, I didn't even turn around. However, when it suddenly decided that I didn't need to back up, anyway, we had to trade it in. Just going forward might seem great for all those motivational speakers out there, but I often find that I really do need to travel in reverse sometimes.
These days, I'm on my third Suburban, a white 3/4 ton four wheel drive. Remember when I said I'd never drive another half ton truck? I meant that crap. The other night, I was on the way to meet my husband at a roping when he called me and sent me after horn wraps for the roping steers. I drove to a friend's house, pulled out into the pasture and up to the arena. I located the sand covered wraps which were lying all over the ground, and headed to the car. I opened the back door and took a quick inventory. Red top blood collection tubes, a box of syringes, needles, a couple of different glass medicine bottles, a roadside emergency kit, a pound or so of arena dirt, and a stroller. I tossed in the wraps and thought yep, it's a good thing I don't drive some girly city car. It would never survive my family. So to the lady in her Lexus that looks down her nose at me in the carpool line at school, your car wouldn't last a day and a half at my house, and it couldn't pull my horse trailer down the street. I drive what I drive because I want to, and I wouldn't have it any other way.