Many of my earliest childhood memories surrounded my mother’s ancient, “Radio-Flyer-Red” Plymouth Valiant. I spent a lot of time in that car, usually being driven to many of my mom’s various clubs and organizations, or to her “Why’d-God- Have-to-Give-Me-a-Boy?” counseling sessions.

The Valiant also figured into one of my earliest non-memories of childhood. You see, at the tender (albeit mischievous) age of two, I crashed said Valiant into our house. OK, calling it our house was kind of misleading, but more on that later.

I call it a non-memory because, although I have no direct recollection of the event, my parents were always quick to remind me of it enough times that I have rote-memorized the story so that I would forget.

To clarify: I say it was our house, but it wasn’t really our house. I mean, mom and dad owned it, but, as it turns out, we were moving from that old house to a new one. My new breakfast nook was opened on one of the last days of moving. Pay no heed to the fact that our “new” home was exactly one block away from the old one. (Mom and dad were never much for big changes.) My mom had loaded the aforementioned Valiant full of belongings and had decided that there was room enough for one more, fateful item. She went inside to get it.

I, her 2-year-old, hyperactive sugar-junkie son, was now left alone in a fully loaded automobile with the engine running. While I don’t remember this event directly, and had no witnesses of the act, I do clearly remember the tree-shifter for the automatic transmission car.

“ P R N D 2 L” were the letters offered just above the steering wheel. The shifter was chrome with a black handle. An orange arrow-carat thing pointed to the letter “P”. I pulled on the chrome thing and found the arrow thing was now somewhere between “D” and “L”. I also found the car was rolling down the steep incline toward the side of the house.

To this day, I don’t know what evoked more ire from my father: The fact that I hit the house with our car, or the fact that I hit the house we had just vacated.
Anyway, from that point forward, the car had a house-induced dent and paint scrape along the passenger-side front quarter panel.

The house had a car-induced hole gouged out of the wooden skirt that protected its crawlspace. While I don’t recall it specifically, I’m sure I had a dad-induced handprint on my backside for several days following the event. I was prone to getting those rather frequently.

We sold the Valiant to a friend of the family long before I ever got a second shot at the driver’s seat with the engine running, although I spent countless hours trying to manipulate all the controls when it was parked. My mom would send me out to the car for a shopping (or counseling) trip, and then she would get sidetracked on chasing my little sister, or smacking the dog on the nose with a newspaper. It could have been a late bathroom run, or a few dozen “quick” phone calls.

No matter what, if I got the chance, I would tug on the gear shifter, play with the turn signal, turn the radio dial to “on” or mess with the mirrors. Sometimes my little sister would be trapped in the back of the car with me, and my friend Scott. We would mess with the hood of her winter jacket, which came to a bright yellow point at the top of her head. We dubbed her head the “Space Needle.”

I never understood this, but no matter what I manipulated, (ie: play with the turn signal, changing the radio’s manual preset buttons, making seat or mirror adjustments,) I always tried to set things right before my mom would eventually get to the car. And yet, somehow, she always knew, what I had done. Mom had an uncanny knack for that: “You played with the turn signal, messed with the parking brake, adjusted my mirror and the radio is adjusted to a point where I can't get the classical music station clearly." (All this before she even put the key in the ignition.)


Now, my father would never have let me mess around in the driver’s seat of the car, because my father never let me forget ANYTHING that I had ever done wrong. (This remained true well into my adulthood. I mispronounced a word when I was in my mid-teens. He still would file back to that from time to time, well into my thirties. “Your Uncle Les served in Viet NORM.”)

So, needless to say, dad was probably nervous about me driving until the day he died.

The first time Dad ever gave me an “official” driving lesson (when I was fifteen-and-a-half and had my learner’s permit) he said, “And whatever you do, don’t drive it into the house.”
Come on dad, that would require driving up on the curb and through three birch trees.

Sheesh. Come on, old man! I hadn’t done THAT since I was nine!!!!

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Phoenix Flight: Rise of the Phoenix Flight: Phoenix Flight Book One

And if I haven't alienated you completely yet, there's also my comedy!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvRYq...