Mustang Sally

My Momma has a reputation for not being the best driver to ever hit the asphault. It’s not that she is an angry driver or doesn’t know how. It’s just that she is a bit inattentive. She tends to get distracted by the life around her or at times the life in the car.

When Momma is in the car she is a bit like a dog with a squirrel. She sees something bright and shiny along the side of the road and all of a sudden we are hitting the brakes and loading 30 bags of leaves in the back of the suburban despite the fact that we were on the way to school and oblivious to the cars that are honking their horns behind us on the street.

Momma has caught the scent of what she wants and that is all she can smell…not the burned rubber or her children’s fear. The other thing about her driving is that it is a bit unorthodox. She doesn’t do her makeup or curl her eyelashes at stoplights – that’s far too amateur or pedestrian for her.

Momma thinks nothing of driving with one foot on the dash or heading down the highway while reading a medical journal. Nothing makes a ten-year-old pay attention to their surroundings like a mother who is going 70 mph while reading about the latest breakthroughs in minimally invasive gallbladder surgeries.

Momma also likes to think while in the car. About the latest surgery she has done or the one to come or what is going on in her life. Once she got so wrapped into thinking about where her life was heading she forgot to pick me up from the babysitters on her way back home from the hospital. No small feat considering the ranch was a full 15 miles from town.

The other thing about riding in cars with her is that some pretty memorable stuff tends to happen. Some moments make you chuckle and some define who you are for the rest of your life.

Buckle up dear readers. We're about to go for a few rides.