I drive a stick shift Mitsubishi Lancer GTS. I freaking love that vehicle more than anything. She’s a step below the sports car version and she has these adorable low-profile tires that only need to be replaced about once a year… I almost would call the car sporty, but no car wants to be referred to as sporty. Sporty makes me think of soccer moms in capri pants, or grandmas sporting cool sunglasses. I don’t think that’s what most people think sporty means.
Yesterday afternoon, I borrowed the company SUV. Usually I will just take my GTS on work errands, but yesterday I had six bins of post to carry out, and my poor “sports” vehicle was packed full of moldy coolers because everyone likes drinking beer out of moldy coolers.
There’s a certain smugness that accompanies driving an SUV. For those 17 1/2 minutes, I felt like I was an adult for the first time, like climate change and Russian-influenced voting didn’t matter, because I was a harried but vainglorious mom, eyeing my little Jayden and Isabella in the rearview. They were sitting in their car seats while I mom-drove them to day care.
As I hauled the bins of envelopes out of the SUV’s trunk and lugged them into the post office, I felt like I commandeered a whole new kind of respect that I’ve never before had. I felt like people looked at me and thought, “that is a real woman who has found her path.”
As I drove back to the office, listening to FM radio, I sang along to adult contemporary from my youth, and, just for a moment, I was like, “This is how my parents felt.”
When I returned to the office I told this thought to our receptionist/office manager. She’s much cooler than me, but she smiled like I was funny. I’d like to see her face five seconds after I walked away. She’s probably writing a book about her asinine coworkers.