It's funny what scares you. Or maybe you're perfectly normal and only afraid of heights that you may fall from or snake bites that might actually kill you. As for me, I like to take the quirky side of irrational. Apparently.
The 1973 Dodge Calypso that is to become the Take this Cup Coffee Truck is perched happily and safely in the back corner of the yard; backed there by a neighbor who offered to do it for me, likely without even knowing that the thought of driving the thing has been keeping me up nights for a week. I had been sitting in this chair, trying to take up nail biting, instant messaging my friend Harmony to talk her into guiding my drive to the back yard on her lunch break. Not because the treacherous roll around the corner of the house would be hard to navigate, but because the thought of doing it had me in a complete panic. As I awaited her response, I absently brushed the hairy eight-legged monster off my elbow without a second thought. (Well, there was a second thought, a few minutes later, as to why I hadn't jumped through the window screaming when a wolf spider was crawling on me, but even that was a rather calm thought.)
My sister Jesse gave me a ride to pick up the Calypso last week. I had a securely fastened manila folder of registration paperwork, printed out insurance emails and temporary plates and a promise that my new pal who was selling me the vehicle would help me drive it home. Just as soon as he was done at the dentist. He hadn't called back by the time we got there, so we took a detour to do a little shopping while I waited for the call. Is that actually my greatest fear, I wonder? Waiting for the phone to ring? Or slowly going mad waiting for the ring tone, like watching for an inanimate possessed object to come to life? That is precisely what I started to do, wandering the aisles of Target, checking the screen compulsively incase I suddenly went deaf and wouldn't be able to hear the ring on full volume. What if he just didn't call back? Just disappeared? Took off with the check and laughed to someone about how he'd pulled one over on this stupid woman from Bantam who thought she bought a camper on Craigslist. What if I would just have to go and retrieve the vehicle on my own, learning to drive this antiquated beast down Rte 202 as I went?
So relieved was I when he did finally call and we were at last in the bucket seats heading west that the brakes going out on East Main Street in Torrington didn't even get me down. I was still smiling, gripping the dashboard, as we rolled through a red light at a busy intersection, unable to stop, and into the Twin Co parking lot, where the emergency brake finally did its job.
Is it overdrive, I wonder? Or do we only start to think clearly and positively when we get close enough to a near-death situation to give us a little perspective? I still haven't had to actually drive it myself, but the Calypso, all five tons, is parked out back on just enough of an angle, aimed right at my window, right at my chair, spider and all, that if the brakes suddenly succumbed to gravity- well, I want to say that it would all be over quickly, but that's not true either. The fire and smashed house and unpayable hospital bills of that scenario are perhaps just enough to keep me and my sense of perspective happily in order.
You know what they say. If you're not living on the edge, you're taking up too much room. Some people sky dive. Me, I think about parking. Some people wrestle alligators. Me, I make business plans.
Stay tuned for the next action packed episode, wherein our heroine replaces a PVC pipe for the camper water tank......
