*published Aug. 4, 2005
When I used to drive a Honda Prelude (in Ticket-Me Red), I admittedly liked to punch the accelerator as I shifted manually up the gears. I never got a ticket in that car, but I deserved many.
Now that I drive a minivan, my driving habits have changed. For one thing, it just seems wrong to lay rubber in a "momcar". Plus, it looks stupid. And with today's gas prices, I try to wring every last tenth of a mile out of each gallon I buy. But I still find myself going fast.
I realize that the speed limit down Kraemer Boulevard is forty miles per hour, and I try to be good. But I'm an arrival gal; I just want to get from point A to point B. If there's no traffic, my van tends to drift to a slightly higher "natural" speed of fifty. I know it's wrong, but it feels so right.
My son, Marcus, has been on my case about this since he was old enough to recognize numbers. "How fast are you going?" he would ask from his car seat in the back.
"Forty," I would answer.
In the rear view mirror, I would see his little head craning up to look over the seat. "No you're not, you're going fifty," he'd tell me accusingly. Grudgingly, I'd slow down.
I thought that his pre-teen years would lead toward a more reckless attitude, but I was wrong. The other day we were driving down Alta Vista Street, on our way to a friend's house. I was following a small truck with lawn care implements in the back.
The truck was doing the speed limit, but it felt slower. I don't know why it always feels slow to follow a landscaping truck. Maybe the lawn mowers in the back make it hard to see that the truck is actually moving forward.
Whipping around the truck, I muttered, "He's just too slow for me."
My back seat driver, as usual, had something to say. "How fast was he going?"
"Forty," I replied.
"Mom," the admonishment came. "The speed limit is forty."
"Yes, but he was doing a slow forty," I explained. "I like to do a fast forty."
"What's a 'fast' forty?"
There was a brief silence in the car while I formulated my answer. "Fifty," I admitted, at last.
Now it was Marcus' turn for silence. Finally, he spoke, "Soooo, fifty is not fifty, it's just forty, but more so?"
"Sure," I said, thinking if I couldn't win the debate with reason, confusion was the next best thing.
Still, I slowed the van down a little, to a 'medium' forty. I just hope that the Placentia police force appreciates my son's efforts to keep me within the guidelines – er, I mean, speed limits.