Tin Cans and Rattle Snakes

I used to think that I had bad luck when it came to cars.

When I was sixteen, newly licensed and free to access the world at large, I made the mistake of backing my dad's (newish) '95 Ford Escort wagon into a lovely little red sports car while exiting a parking spot.  The incident, as it was referred to at the time, was something that I was sure spelled the end of my driving career.  Cars, being very expensive, and also potentially dangerous if not handled with the appropriate respect, were a very important thing in my family; my abuse of the new car was something that, at least in my addled sixteen year-old mind, was  going to be epic.  I imagined the return home, telling my father that not only had I driven IN to a parking spot, but I had backed IN to another car.  Somehow my brain had taken me to a point where I would be banished from the family, only to live in unlicensed hell for all eternity.

Of course, it didn't turn out that way.  My dad was very levelheaded with the conversation, as we detailed what happened, and the gentleman I drove into even came calling to speak with him.  The exchange was very calm, very quite and almost supremely civilized.

The suspense was killing me. Surely there would be an epic outburst before my exile?  Surely someone would flail and strip me of my little blue card that otherwise entitled me to roam?

No such conversation ever happened.  I paid for the repairs to our car, and my father paid for the repairs to the other.  He did say, in none-too-clear terms, that if ever he caught me driving into another parking spot, I would no longer be allowed to drive his cars.

That resonated.

Many years later, while visiting friends in Texas, I borrowed a car to go roaming with my friend Cheryl.  It was late, and I was in foreign terrain, not to mention supremely sleep deprived.  At the time, the drive seemed like a great idea, and we set off with such zeal that I had even joked with my friends that were the police to call them, they were to kindly post our bail.

I had been joking at the time.

The drive was really very short and only leading us from our friends' home by two streets, though, the second was a long, isolated road upon which there were few other cars.  The further along the road I drove, my friend Cheryl and I noted how desolate it seemed - only a few cars were passing us now in the opposite direction, and none seemed to be headed our way.

Clear skies were visible - there were no longer street lamps or traffic lights, but merely the glow of the September Texas skies.  It felt like heaven, even though the temperatures hovered near the hundred point, and our poor Canadian systems were nowhere near prepared for it.

Eventually, hoping to procure a street sign in a fit of mid-twenties mid-mid-life crisis, I drove the car up beside our selected sign and crept out of the car only to marvel in the emptiness.  There was no one for miles, and the only thing within sight was a silent dairy farm.

Our robbery would go unnoticed.

Still, too short to reach the sign, I needed to bring the car in closer.  Whatever happened next is really a question for the Gods, because one moment we were on terra firma, slowly moving closer to our goal, and the next, two tires were only perilously resting on the ground, while the other two barely touched.

It took moments before we exited the car, assessed the situation by cellphone light and then promptly decided that perhaps, with a little luck and sheer brute strength, maybe we could *drive* the car out of the ditch, while the other was lifting.  2000 pounds of metal does not move easily - we know that now most certainly.

While sitting in the car, with cellphones that had no reception, and our windows rolled down to try and cool off, we realized there was distinctive shifting in the grass, and a rattle emanating from the area.  We'd heard there were rattle snakes in the area - but did that mean we had company?

Panic struck and we rolled up the windows, sitting in horror waiting for some ax-wielding maniac to come and finish us off - wasn't that what happened in situations like this?

911, being such a reliable service as it is, was thankfully a number we could dial, even in our tin-can death trap, perched in a ditch dangling over a snake pit.  That must have been, at least for that operator, the funniest 911 call ever...

You see, when you tell a panicking girl that help is hours away, things tend to get wrangy.

"Listen, it can NOT take three hours - we're two Canadian girls, lost in the middle of nowhere, we've borrowed our friend's car, and she does NOT know where we are.  We have no cellphone reception, and we have BOTH seen Texas Chainsaw Masacre..."

The tow truck took less then 50 minutes.

In recent years I have had a few more car adventures - though none quite as colourful as that.  My darling Estella, the car I bought what seems like ages ago, has now begun to creek with old age.  When shifting, she sounds as if there are dozens of tin cans trailing behind, and though I've already been in to see a mechanic, major surgery is required.

Still, I won't tempt the fates; already I've had a series of unusual events, and I know now what it's like to be scared and waiting for a fate worse than the ones you've already imagined.  I don't soon wish to repeat that experience.

That's why I still only back into parking spots.