This is a real quickie - nothing special; just an amusing little story. :)

For several weeks, I had been bugging my mom to let me drive the family car - an old, 1960-something Ford Galaxy - whenever we went out. I would've been happy just steering, sitting next to her. But NooOOOooo...

So one evening, I saw her car keys on the kitchen table. This seemed like a message from above, and of course we all know we aren't supposed to ignore those. So I took the keys, along with two big fat phone books, out to the car; put the phone books on the seat; sat down; got the thing cranked up; and headed down the driveway. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you're reacting right now), our car was an automatic. I would've been dead in the water with a clutch.

I got three blocks. The only real trouble I had (not counting the unceremonious end) was making a 90-degree left out of the driveway onto the street. A little mailbox trouble. I managed to avoid all but one. This one mailbox happened to belong to the family across the street - the same family who moved out the following winter and left my Big Three sex-education books on the curb. There's a message in those two events, but I can't put my finger on it...

Went through two intersections, which fortunately had stop signs for the cross-traffic and not for our street. Although I could stop the car by sliding down to touch the brake pedal, I would have had trouble doing it in a hurry, or in a controlled manner. The car didn't have power brakes; if it had, I might be writing this story with some steering-wheel fragments still embedded in my forehead. As it was, the few times during the ride I experimented with tapping the pedal, I stopped rather abruptly, managing to bang my chin on the horn in the process.

Finally, after three blocks, I ran up over the curb and had the right front wheel partway in someone's yard. Another abrupt stop, another blast on the horn. This seemed like a good time to kill the engine.

I hadn't planned this far ahead, so I had no idea what to do. Luckily(?), the house next door to my resting-place was the home of a lady who knew my mom. She came out and asked what I was doing. I tried to explain. She seemed remarkably unmoved by my touching tale of deprivation. She ended up driving me home; I got into the expected degree of trouble (got whacked with a belt, to be specific); and was exiled to my room.

Later in the week, I was obliged to replace the mangled mailbox with a new one, post and all. Since I was not a professional mailbox-post installer, the new box leaned at a small but definite angle toward the right, when viewed from our house. It was thereafter a contant reminder of my little adventure.

I have two conclusions: (a) It was fun while it lasted. And (b), if my own kids try anything like that at 9 y/o, I'm gonna be extremely unsympathetic.