The English Geek

I Wish I Had a Picture

This morning while I was driving the boys to school, Jake asked me what car he would drive once he gets his driver's license. Amid my horror at the thought of any of my children driving, a vivid little image popped into my brain: the car I was privileged to drive as a teenager.

I didn't take driver's ed until the summer after I turned sixteen. Since I left school early, right after third period, to go to the gym, I didn't have room in my schedule for it. Plus there was the fact, the rusty, brown, embarrassing fact of the car I was going to have to drive.

I wasn't very excited about getting my driver's license.

Most of my friends had cars that weren't all that amazing. Well, Kristi had a new CR-X, but she was the exception. Chris had a Gremlin, I think, and we once had a terrifying moment driving up the canyon when we couldn't figure out why it had lost all its power (no one said you had to change gears when driving uphill!) Jenn had a Pinto. It seems like most of the boys I knew had old, 1950s-era cars, except for the guy with the Monza. The Monza! I can't even tell you how much stuff happened in that Monza. Second only to the Audi which came later. Amazing or not, though, the point was that I wasn't all that anxious to drive, since everyone else already had cars---cars that were less-embarrassing than the one I had to drive.

I wish, so badly, that I had a picture.

In fact, I wish I had a picture of all those cars, because they were each a fragment of our identities. A way of knowing who was who, the thing you looked for carefully when you were driving down the street, hoping to spot someone you knew. A space where things happened: conversations, crying, kissing. Music. A synecdoche object, car-as-person. Spot the little silver car, see Chris. Spot the Monza and your heart accelerated.

Since I don't have a photo, though, let me describe the car I drove once I finally got my driver's license. It was, as previously stated, brown. And rusty. The seats were black vinyl benches. The floorboards were covered with ragged rubber mats and there was a tear in the back seat. There was no air conditioning, of course, but it did have windows, the kind you rolled down with the knob, which was also black. It also lacked seat belts; some had been cut off by previous owners, and the rest were shoved down into that dusty, crumb-filled netherworld under the seats. It had an AM radio with a dial for tuning and those hard plastic knobs you'd push for your station presets. (If, that is, you could actually find a station you wanted to listen to. Not much alternative music was played on AM radio, even in the eighties.)

It was, dear reader, a 1972 Ford Torino.

I gave it a very foul name, as was tradition---all of my friends named their cars. Constantly shutgun (or shoved to the middle when I had passengers) was an enormous boom box, powered by batteries, so I was never without music. You'd think that black interior would make me happy, considering my black affection. After scorching the backs of my legs on the seats countless times, or the palm of my hand on the window knobs, however: not so much. It was old, and ugly, and unfeminine. I hated that car as much as I loved it.

Because it did have one redeeming quality: it was fast. Don't tell my dad, but sometimes I would race against the other fast cars. Sometimes I would be feeling desperate enough that I would win because I wasn't afraid of anything: police, or accidents, or the certain death that comes from high-speed impact. I would gun it, and I would beat the boys, and they would be both annoyed and sheepishly envious. Even the boy with the Monza. And as much as I wanted something new, and cute, and feminine, that ugly old car was often my refuge. It gave me a way to escape. If the odometer had worked, it would have counted all the miles I drove, drinking coffee and crying.

The odometer wasn't the only thing that didn't work, though. The gas gage, too, was broken. That car guzzled gas, and I was never sure how much it had. So I ran out of gas. Often. I'd have to walk to the nearest gas station, call my dad, and wait for help. And it didn't have brake lights, either.

Sometimes I'm not sure my parents loved me very much.

One of the first things I bought for myself once I had a job that paid decently was a car. Nothing new, of course; but it was, at least, small. The gas gage, odometer, and brake lights all worked. I think the Torino was handed down to Becky. It was a relief to give it up, but oddly enough I'd like to see it again. Down in that under-the-seats netherworld, mixed in with french fry bits, and donut crumbs, and dust and ash and seat belts, the cells of myself mingle with time. Awful and embarrassing and dangerous as it was, the Torino was, after all, a piece of my identity.

And I wish I had a picture.

What did you drive as a teenager?

If Summer Were a Woman

walking between waif-like spring in her clingy rayon dresses and fall's red-headed, bohemian strides, she'd be platinum blond, naturally. Summer is the sort of woman whose make-up is always perfect and whose hair is always perfect; whose closet is full of perfect designer clothes in any color she wants. She never leaves the house in sweats and a pony tail. Her house is always clean and there are plenty of fresh foods on her dinner menu. (She does, after all, have all sorts of daylight to work with; she's up at dawn and goes until the sun's exhausted.) She's an expert in mingling at parties because she's confident and funny. She knows exactly what's current, whether you're talking about fitness, diet, fashion, movie stars, or child care. Of course Summer has children. It's part of her perfection. Her kids are well-behaved, albeit a little bit sandy around the edges. She works hard to lull you into overlooking the monotony of her plot. She's tan but not too tan; thin but tone; beautiful but not intimidating.

Summer is a perfect woman.

The fact that she's nothing like me isn't what makes me dislike her; it's all that perfection. It's boring. It's flat; it's too much about appearances and the external. Plus, all that heat: sure, she's warm. But fail to give her the respect she demands, and she'll burn you. She's more dangerous that you think. Sunny days and pleasant evenings, flowers and that fresh-corn scent of mown grass, fireworks and fresh watermelon: my reactions to summer's pleasures each have a slight insecurity. Maybe I'm too unlike her to be completely comfortable in her presence.

Then August comes, and Summer starts to fall apart. The once-fresh skin of leaves begins to wrinkle, the roses seem to have used up all their pigment, and the sun runs out of energy sooner and sooner. Summer's secure grasp on confidence begins to weaken, imperceptibly. She starts to question her never-ending warmth and enthusiasm as the strength of her heat starts to wane. Her mood changes; bright blue, then almost instantly stormy. Suddenly she allows for rain and has the temperament for rainbows. Each day finds her, still blond and perfectly dressed, but with a few straggly seams. Her roots begin to show.

It is in August that I make friends with summer. Perhaps it's because I know my friend autumn will visit soon. More than that: her imperfections make her interesting. Her unpredictability matches my own. Her house starts to clutter---weeds, and spent flowers, and even a few fallen leaves---and I can relate. More and more, her edges darken. Wind seems to inflate her flatness, but really it is that she grows rich on the ends of things. In August, Summer becomes a woman who has had things happen to her, and her end-of-season sadness lets me trust her. In August, Summer stumbles. In August she notices even me. She becomes, by losing and changing and drawing to an end, a woman whose imperfections make her better than she was.

In August, Summer and I get along just fine.

Personal History

A couple of weeks ago, I was asked to head up a discussion group about personal history for my ward (church group). Since I have such a strong belief that everyone should be writing down the details of their lives, I was thrilled about the possibility. For our first meeting, I put together a few handouts---I made one with general writing ideas, one with suggestions for topics, and one with hundreds of idea starters (the sort that you can cut apart and put into a journaling jar). I think the meeting went well, even though there were only three other people.

I've been thinking a lot, since then, about my own personal history. I write down a lot of things in a lot of different places---blog, journal, scrapbooks, writer's notebooks, an Amy-Rosenthal-style index I add random stuff to. But I think there's a big difference between those things and a personal history. Looking backward gives you a perspective you don't have when something is happening; it also helps you to question what you don't know about your life so that you can (hopefully) still ask the people who would know. (For example: what do you know about the details of your birth? Aside from the fact that my dad went home during my mom's long (36+ hours) labor so he could make a cake, and my obviously superior manual dexterity which manifested itself just minutes after my birth when I pulled the oxygen tube out of my mother's nose, I don't know much.) I've also been reading Natalie Goldberg's Old Friend from Far Away. Well, re-reading. I've been thinking about the way I write things down, and the power inherent in story. I've been thinking: I need to start writing down my stories.

Then, today, I had the opportunity of going to the Winter Storytelling Festival . I listened to the keynote presentation by Syd Lieberman Syd Lieberman, and I have to say: I wish every single one of my personal history group (all three of them!) could have come along too. Speaking about the things he's learned as a storyteller, he talked about a variety of topics: the journals of WWI air force pilots, the men who engineered the Mars rover, the Johnstown flood, the Holocaust. He used those topics, and the interactions he's had with them as a storyteller, to relate some ideas that I think apply equally as well to writing your personal history.

The first thing that storytelling does is capture life. Discover what is miraculous, what is wonderful; capture both the joy and the sadness in your life. He spoke about his daughter, who's expecting his first grandson, how he listened to the baby's heartbeat and how miraculous that sound was to him, listening to a person who "wasn't there a few weeks before. And then he was." (I can so relate: isn't that a magical experience?)

Storytelling is an act of celebration. Even writing or telling the sadness is a celebration. It is a way of communicating with another person, of asking someone else, "look, do you see what life is like?" and believing that they will shake their head and say "yes, I know."

History is real---real stories about real people who died. When you write your own personal history, you also end up telling other people's stories. This is a way of being a witness: that person existed, his/her experiences are worth remembering. Otherwise, their stories are lost, too. Historical stories and personal stories always interact---they are the same thing.

When you delve into the history of a life---yours or someone else's---you aren't just telling stories. You're witnessing for yourself. The process teaches you something about yourself, and so is always worth the effort.

Sometimes it seems like subjects converge in your life: you find pieces of a certain idea here, and here, and there and there, and suddenly it means something. "Personal history" seems to be what life is telling me. "Write down your stories." And I don't think I am meant to do this in the half-baked, raw, unedited format of my journals and blog. Instead, I want to make my experiences just that: stories, with all the impact they hold.

What stories have you not told?