I remember when I was a mechanic....

I was 6 or 7, I'm not sure. A lady in our church was getting married to a nice man, a mechanic. As was the custom, all the other ladies in the church planned a big wedding shower for her in the church basement. Someone had the cute idea to have the presents brought in on a wagon pulled by me, dressed as a mechanic, driving my little push-pedal station wagon. (Mine was a cool gold colour, not the sissy pink in the picture here.)

Mom left me pretty much to myself to pull my outfit together. I put on jeans with holes in them and an old sweatshirt. I asked Dad if I could borrow his tool belt and some wrenches and stuff, and I also asked for a shop beanie, the kind with a little brim. I tucked my hair into the hat, brim backwards, rubbed a bit of grease off the floor of the garage onto my face and hands, buckled on the tool belt and headed over to the church. I think Dad must have carried over the pedal car for me.

In the basement of the church, I ducked out of sight of all the ladies gushing over their little ladies games and tea and fussy little sandwiches. We tied the wagon onto the car in the hallway just outside their meeting room, and I climbed in to wait for my cue.

The door opened and one of the ladies beckoned to me. My stomach lurched a bit, but I composed my face into bored nuetral and drove the car into the room, heading for the table where I was supposed to drop off my wagon load...I could feel every eye on me. There was whispering and giggling, and all those women looking just at me...and I LOVED it! I decided that if I was a mechanic, maybe I should probably fix my car a little. I turned my head to the side to listen to the engine as I had seen my dad doing, then got out of the car, grabbed a wrench and stuck my head as far under as I could. More laughter and whispering! I tinkered for a few minutes, then got up, wiped my hands together in satisfaction, and finished my drive to the gift table, all decorated with pink streamers and pompoms. Could this be my first ever round of applause? I know I loved it.

I didn't stick around for long. Us mechanics feel kind of uncomfortable in the presence of all those ladies...we get worried that we will get them dirty or something. I seem to recall eating a bit of white cake with pink frosting and then heading back to the garage.

I remember being mooned for the first time...

Sheri, my best college friend, and I hopped in her car and headed south of the border to Seattle to go see Steve Taylor in concert. We were very excited to see him, he was so New Wave and crazy! The show was great, even though there was nowhere to dance...what is it with concert halls that don't allow people to actually enjoy the music?

Anyway, after the show, we were full of pent-up energy. There were blocks and blocks to walk in late-night Seattle, but both of us were bouncing along as we headed towards the car. There wasn't much traffic, so we noticed when a car drove slowly by. It took a moment to register what exactly I was looking at. The passenger in the back seat had his pants down and his butt squished against the window, mooning us. I had never even heard of such a thing before! I felt insulted, like somebody had just called me a rude name. Why would he do that to us? What had we ever done to him? Did we look funny or something? I thought it was disgusting, and Sheri and I shook our heads as we finished the walk to the car.

I have discovered in the years since that mooning isn't such a big deal to many people. My husband has, on occasion, mooned his own mother! Bart Simpson has mooned just about everybody! But when I was 18, all I knew was that some hairy teenager with pimples had pulled his pants down and I felt insulted. My upbringing had not prepared me for public displays of butt.

I remember playing in the car....

Before you start clucking your tongue, this was something I was allowed to do. I wasn't a little kid, for goodness' sake. I was 11 or 12!

It was a sunny day and I was playing by myself. I was sitting in the driver's seat of the '68 Comet, pretending to be a grown-up, all cool and suave. I rested my right wrist on the steering wheel lazily, then rolled down the window and nodded nonchalantly at the people I was pretending to drive by. Oh, they were impressed with my driving skills! I glanced at the radio and pushed a few buttons, looking for imaginary rock and roll music.

At this point, I remember my eye landing on the cigarette lighter. All of a sudden I could look at nothing else. There it sat, woefully unused except for the few times Dad had showed me how it would pop out when it was hot. I found myself wondering how it worked. I pushed it in. I waited. It popped, and I pulled it out and looked at the glowing red circles. How could this light a cigarette? There wasn't even any flame. I did the next thing that popped into my mind. I touched it.

Wow! I burned myself a new set of fingerprints, and fast! First I dropped the lighter. Then I looked around quickly to see if anyone had noticed my stupidity. Nope, still alone. Then I stuck the lighter back in its place and sucked my finger.

This is how I have learned many of the important lessons in my life. There seems to be an inability to accept anybody else's word for anything. It means I have hurt myself many times, burned myself many new sets of fingerprints...but I know what I know, and nobody can tell me any different.

I remember winning a little drag race....

It was summer down in Southern Alberta, and it was hot. HOT. HOT!!! Our family was driving to Lake Newell near Brooks to spend a day at the lake. My little sister and I were sitting in the back seat of Dad's 1974 Mercury Montcalm, legs sticking to the vinyl from the heat.

As we pulled up to a stop light in Brooks, a very shiny red fancy car pulled up beside us. I don't know what kind of car it was, I was only a kid. Dad, with a twinkle in his eye, looked through Mom's open window to the young driver and revved the engine. The guy looked back at Dad, saw the family sitting in the giant boat of a car, and laughed. Dad revved the engine again.

The light turned green. The young guy put the pedal to the floor and pulled away, but Dad only let him get up to the front bumper, and then Dad hit it. We soared past that sports car and left him in the dust!! My little sister and I were bouncing up and down in the back seat from excitement! Wahoo!! The family beat the young hot shot! We looked back at him through the rear windshield and laughed and hooted.

At the next red light, the sports car pulled up beside us. "What do you have under the hood of that thing?" he asked my Dad. Dad told him some big number, 235 or 438 or something (I was just a kid, I don't remember!). The young man looked very impressed. He learned not to judge a car by its cover that day.

Too bad they weren't racing for pink slips!