Feedback would be much appreciated!
I am one of the luckiest drivers in the world. I like to drive very fast in bad weather. I dance in and out of lanes at high speed while I?m on my cell phone. Because of a recent change in NY state law, I now use a headset when on the phone. It makes me feel like a Secret Service agent on a mission, overtaking Jeep Cherokees and Toyota Land Cruisers is my job. I take lane markings and medians as merely strong suggestions and speed limits are only for people with disabilities. I drove alone when I only had my permit, but more out of necessity than teenage rebellion. And even then, I drove very fast. I?m the driver you or your father has cursed at and called crazy when I cut you off and zoom past you. I?m the guy who spurns rice rockets and relishes real sports cars. When Maserati pondered coming back to the US market, they were thinking of people like me.
Some might see it as poetic justice that I?m stuck driving an emerald green 1995 Ford Taurus Station Wagon. Most people are surprised to see a station wagon move so fast or such a large body dart with such fluid agility in and out of highway lanes.
My family purchased a green Ford Taurus wagon in 1994 as our first American built car. My mother was worried about the dubious quality of domestic cars. Yet, this was the car our dealer, my mother?s friend in church recommended. And as friendships go, my mother, a widow of a Presbyterian minister placed church based relationships in higher regard than good sense sometimes. I should note though that the Ford Taurus was then, the best selling car in America surpassing the stalwart Accord and Camry.
As a child, I was obsessed with cars. I had mini parking lots of Hotwheels and Matchbox cars that I arranged in perfect geometric order. I had a particular fondness for the aesthetic felineness of Jaguars and the hard lines of late 80?s Lamborghinis. The Taurus was a workman?s car with simple lines and middle class sensibilities. It wasn?t particularly graceful or elegant. It looked very unassuming especially head on. It wasn?t a small disappointment for me to be hauled around from school to friends to soccer practice to martial arts to the dentist to family vacations to church and to other middle class activities with a very middle class car.
My first car accident in the world took place in that car before I was old enough to drive. My sister and I were on our way home on highway 495 from NYC back to the suburbs. My sister prides herself on having had no moving violations in her more than ten years of extensive driving (she?s never seen the speedometer go past 65mph). She also, like myself, had never been an accident before. It had been a hot summer week with humidity so thick it felt like you had a constant film of sweat. Suddenly it rained in short bursts of extreme down pours as the air drained itself of its excess. The raindrops seemed the size of golf balls and it came so quickly that even the birds were surprised. Visibility on the road dropped to a mere ten feet with the wipers on full speed.
Bright colors stick in your memory but all I remember seeing through the windshield was a drippy red haze suddenly swerving around wildly in front of me making tight circles. The squeal of the tires of the red car in front of us careening out of control wasn?t loud at all. It was muffled by the giant rain drops and the painful squeals of rubber trying to regain traction seemed inconsequential. I felt my car make a hard right as my sister did what came natural and pulled hard on the steering wheel to avoid the incoming steel mass. Although it was hard to tell, it seemed like we just dodged it. Then I felt the world whirling around but it was really just the car spinning. The sudden braking and hard right at highway speed on the slick asphalt pushed the back end of the emerald green station wagon where the front of the car should have been. As if a big godly hand flicked the back of the car and spun it like a quarter.
My sister told me later that we spun around only twice and it probably only lasted at most three seconds before the momentum of the car was transferred to the highway guardrail leaving not a small dent in the corner back bumper. I remember every detail of those three seconds. From the strange relaxation I felt when I realized what was happening, to how the shadows inside the car were shifting in correlation to the spin of the car. Time really is relative and the brain is a remarkable device that can record every minute inconsequential triviality when suddenly it is faced with the high likelihood of its own demise. On highway 495 on that rainy day, my life did not flash before my eyes but on the 15 years of life that I had experienced till then, there wasn?t a more important three seconds in my life.
In junior year of high school, I tore my anterior crucial ligament. It was a training accident from tae kwon do. A martial art that I focused into by no small part from the influence of my wayward uncle. Much to the distress of my mother, I showed no interest in the classical pursuits she adored like piano, violin, painting and other fine arts. This was particularly worrisome to a Korean mother who had taught piano to all her four children into almost maestro levels of proficiency. Well, all except for me. The fact that I had three older sisters that babied me might have pushed me into pursuing what I perceived as a more manly activity.
I came to excel at sparring matches. Fighting another person of somewhat equal build and skill appealed to my sense of fairness. After going up a few belt colors I started going out to tournaments. I ended up winning a number of them somehow which surprised both me and my mother. When it came to physical confrontation she assumed I had no ability to fight back. This might have been because of the wooden paddle she sometimes had but rarely used in my youngest years. She drove me to most of my matches in the Taurus. It became a routine for me to take trips lasting an hour to a few hours dressed in my doh-buk (tkd uniform) and carrying my black bag of sparring gear. The black bag was a medium sized piece of luggage containing a chest guard, shin guards, fore arm guards, a soft helmet, a mouthpiece, and a groin guard I tried not to use. I found that while quite a few kicks landed on my groin by accident sometimes, the pain didn?t seem any less with it on and it cut down my agility quite a bit. More importantly, it gave me an unbelievably uncomfortable wedgie.
I would go to tournaments with this black bag and a feast in the back of the station wagon. My mother had a desire to feed all my friends and my teachers and possibly the state of New York with Korean food. My friends didn?t object and my Korean instructors definitely did not complain about a home made Korean meal. When I went home, the food was gone but there was always a trophy in the space the food was placed. I was usually passed out in the passenger seat reclined all the way back. Even a few two minute rounds can drain all the energy from a sixteen year old. My head had a comfortable home in the familiar grooves of the gray head rest. This too became a routine.
The emerald green Ford Taurus drove me from tournament to tournament. It drove me to practice, to exhibitions, and to demonstrations. It bore witness to my career in tae kwon do and was familiar with it possibly more so than my instructor since it never missed a thing.
This is why I felt nervous, although I didn?t know why I did then, on my way to the state championships. The Taurus had to go into the dealership because of a small trinket or something like that. The factory issued a nation wide recall order the week before what became my last tournament. My sister?s car was what I rode to West Point where the state tournament was held. It was an SUV and had ample room but I couldn?t nap on the way there or back. It was a noticeable enough diversion from my routine that my mother took note of it. When I got there, I felt my left hand tremble just a little bit before my first match of the day. My heart seemed in my throat and I found it difficult to swallow.
Somehow, I made it to the finals of the tournament. My instructor wasn?t surprised as I never lost a sparring match in all of the anxious tournaments I had fought in. My mother was busy video taping me as she did in every tournament I went. It was a running joke that while my mom insisted in recording everything to tape, she missed the most important parts of a tournament and why I went to them, namely, me fighting. She couldn?t bear to see me hit someone else or even worse, get hit by another person while she stood a safe distance away. In every fight she attempted to record, you would hear her gasp as the first kicks were thrown and the camera would immediately point downwards to her sensible shoes.
I went home feeling strangely unreleased and not relaxed. My trophy was sitting in the back after I won the last fight. It wasn?t much of a fight as the two fighters were already exhausted from the day?s frequent matches. Both of us fought conservatively and my opponent scored more technical points leaving me defeated going into the second round. In the first five seconds of the second round, he did something foolish maybe out of over confidence in his points or from being too tired. He charged in head first and I kicked it hard enough to knock his helmet off. He collapsed; I knocked him out and I won. I was too tired to speak to my overjoyed instructor and my mom on the walk back to the car. I couldn?t sleep in the hour and a half drive back. I couldn?t find the groove for my head in this car.
When I arrived home, I briefly showed off to my sisters the state trophy. Immediately afterwards, I placed it in the back of the Taurus (freshly returned that afternoon from the dealer) much to the curiosity of the rest of my family except for my mom. I left it in there overnight and she understood why.
On a training accident after my biggest win, I tore my anterior crucial ligament in my left knee. I actually didn?t even realize anything was wrong until my knee gave out without any warning and I landed on the floor in extreme pain. I tried to walk it off thinking maybe it was just a muscle spasm at the wrong time. I found I couldn?t walk without a severe limp. I iced it for a few days and limped around for a few more. I eventually gained the ability to walk again with an unnoticeable limp. I couldn?t practice tae kwon do however as my knee kept giving out causing me unbearable pain each time I tried to do anything remotely fancy. I finally consented going to the hospital for an MRI. The doctor yelled at me which I didn?t appreciate. He was angry at me for taking so long to get myself to a specialist. But he couldn?t fix me; not really, I only had surgery on threat of future pain from arthritis. They opened my knee up and inserted all sorts of tubes and cameras and installed a fake ligament to replace the natural one that didn?t hold up. It took me a few months to get walking again normally after agonizing physical therapy. I started sitting in the back of the Taurus instead of the front and made myself a new groove. My bloated knee and crotches prevented me from sitting shotgun. The car took me to the hospital and brought me back home. I rode it to physical therapy and to my last checkup at the hospital.
The summer of my high school graduation was when my mother became sick. There was always someone in my immediate and not so immediate family in the hospital room with her. Nobody told me, her only son and youngest child of four, that she was near her deathbed. But I could guess even at 17 that having to wear surgical masks when I came to visit her was not for just ceremonial purposes. And that the tube sticking out of her back sucking out fluids was not a normal accessory in most hospital rooms. I came to visit my mother a lot that summer usually bringing a book or two with me. I would stay for more than my shift required of me tolerating my own warm breath as the elastic bands of the surgical mask kept biting into my skin. I was leaving for college in a couple of weeks and it was a distance but at least still in the same state. I felt guilty. In the spring, I argued with her quite a bit about attending a private college more than six hours away. She argued I should go to a state school nearby. I received not only a full scholarship but also a spending stipend to attend the state college thirty minutes away. A state college that was actually more reputable for my intended major.
I guess it didn?t make sense to her why her little boy was trying oh so desperately hard to leave her. I guess it didn?t make sense to me why my mother was trying to discourage me from making my own mind about the first real adult decision of my life. It makes sense to me now why I shed a few tears driving by myself up to my college.
It came time for me to leave. Nobody had the time to go up with me for moving into my dorm as there was still a family emergency at the hospital. None of my friends were going to the same college or anywhere near it. Most of them decided on the excellent choice of nearby schools around NYC. I was going away from home for the first time in my life by myself. I did not feel particularly sad about myself or my situation. I did not and I still do not tolerate self-pity as it is the biggest waste of time and energy. Why spend time feeling sorry for yourself when you can spend that precious time improving what weaker hearts would cry about. I like to think that the fast winds flowing in from the open windows dried my eyes and my tear ducts were forced to secrete moisture for them. I know that I was just glad to have a piece of home coming up with me in the form of a not so elegant but not so ugly emerald green station wagon.
My Taurus is now about eight years old. It?s been in quite a few accidents and quite a few auto shops. This emerald green station wagon has been driven from New York to Florida to California to New York. It?s made quite a few treks to upstate New York and has visited parts of Canada. Now under my care, the speedometer no longer functions and the radiator leaks. Repairs that are being held off as long as possible as this poor college student scrounges up some spare money that doesn?t seem to exist anywhere other than the comfortable residence of his imagination. Even with these ailments my car really moves. I feel most confident and secure when I?m behind the wheel, I know her pretty well and all the little quirks. We like to have fun on the road and I like to drive hard, she might be getting a little too old for it though as I hear her creak and croan when I go a little too fast. I know though that I?m somehow safer in this car and when it counted, I won?t be let down. This car has seen me realize the vulnerability of life itself on a rainy 495. It?s seen me win when I thought it wasn?t my style to win. And it?s seen me humbled when I won too often. Most importantly, it reminded me of who I am and it won?t ever let me forget where I came from.
I don?t believe in objects holding any kind of sacred power other than our own superstitious perceptions of those objects giving them power. It has occurred to me that any sort of affection I feel for this rusting hunk of green colored steel has to be one of the silliest notions that has crossed this otherwise quite cynical mind. Yet I don?t wonder why I still feel like the luckiest driver in the world.
I am one of the luckiest drivers in the world. I like to drive very fast in bad weather. I dance in and out of lanes at high speed while I?m on my cell phone. Because of a recent change in NY state law, I now use a headset when on the phone. It makes me feel like a Secret Service agent on a mission, overtaking Jeep Cherokees and Toyota Land Cruisers is my job. I take lane markings and medians as merely strong suggestions and speed limits are only for people with disabilities. I drove alone when I only had my permit, but more out of necessity than teenage rebellion. And even then, I drove very fast. I?m the driver you or your father has cursed at and called crazy when I cut you off and zoom past you. I?m the guy who spurns rice rockets and relishes real sports cars. When Maserati pondered coming back to the US market, they were thinking of people like me.
Some might see it as poetic justice that I?m stuck driving an emerald green 1995 Ford Taurus Station Wagon. Most people are surprised to see a station wagon move so fast or such a large body dart with such fluid agility in and out of highway lanes.
My family purchased a green Ford Taurus wagon in 1994 as our first American built car. My mother was worried about the dubious quality of domestic cars. Yet, this was the car our dealer, my mother?s friend in church recommended. And as friendships go, my mother, a widow of a Presbyterian minister placed church based relationships in higher regard than good sense sometimes. I should note though that the Ford Taurus was then, the best selling car in America surpassing the stalwart Accord and Camry.
As a child, I was obsessed with cars. I had mini parking lots of Hotwheels and Matchbox cars that I arranged in perfect geometric order. I had a particular fondness for the aesthetic felineness of Jaguars and the hard lines of late 80?s Lamborghinis. The Taurus was a workman?s car with simple lines and middle class sensibilities. It wasn?t particularly graceful or elegant. It looked very unassuming especially head on. It wasn?t a small disappointment for me to be hauled around from school to friends to soccer practice to martial arts to the dentist to family vacations to church and to other middle class activities with a very middle class car.
My first car accident in the world took place in that car before I was old enough to drive. My sister and I were on our way home on highway 495 from NYC back to the suburbs. My sister prides herself on having had no moving violations in her more than ten years of extensive driving (she?s never seen the speedometer go past 65mph). She also, like myself, had never been an accident before. It had been a hot summer week with humidity so thick it felt like you had a constant film of sweat. Suddenly it rained in short bursts of extreme down pours as the air drained itself of its excess. The raindrops seemed the size of golf balls and it came so quickly that even the birds were surprised. Visibility on the road dropped to a mere ten feet with the wipers on full speed.
Bright colors stick in your memory but all I remember seeing through the windshield was a drippy red haze suddenly swerving around wildly in front of me making tight circles. The squeal of the tires of the red car in front of us careening out of control wasn?t loud at all. It was muffled by the giant rain drops and the painful squeals of rubber trying to regain traction seemed inconsequential. I felt my car make a hard right as my sister did what came natural and pulled hard on the steering wheel to avoid the incoming steel mass. Although it was hard to tell, it seemed like we just dodged it. Then I felt the world whirling around but it was really just the car spinning. The sudden braking and hard right at highway speed on the slick asphalt pushed the back end of the emerald green station wagon where the front of the car should have been. As if a big godly hand flicked the back of the car and spun it like a quarter.
My sister told me later that we spun around only twice and it probably only lasted at most three seconds before the momentum of the car was transferred to the highway guardrail leaving not a small dent in the corner back bumper. I remember every detail of those three seconds. From the strange relaxation I felt when I realized what was happening, to how the shadows inside the car were shifting in correlation to the spin of the car. Time really is relative and the brain is a remarkable device that can record every minute inconsequential triviality when suddenly it is faced with the high likelihood of its own demise. On highway 495 on that rainy day, my life did not flash before my eyes but on the 15 years of life that I had experienced till then, there wasn?t a more important three seconds in my life.
In junior year of high school, I tore my anterior crucial ligament. It was a training accident from tae kwon do. A martial art that I focused into by no small part from the influence of my wayward uncle. Much to the distress of my mother, I showed no interest in the classical pursuits she adored like piano, violin, painting and other fine arts. This was particularly worrisome to a Korean mother who had taught piano to all her four children into almost maestro levels of proficiency. Well, all except for me. The fact that I had three older sisters that babied me might have pushed me into pursuing what I perceived as a more manly activity.
I came to excel at sparring matches. Fighting another person of somewhat equal build and skill appealed to my sense of fairness. After going up a few belt colors I started going out to tournaments. I ended up winning a number of them somehow which surprised both me and my mother. When it came to physical confrontation she assumed I had no ability to fight back. This might have been because of the wooden paddle she sometimes had but rarely used in my youngest years. She drove me to most of my matches in the Taurus. It became a routine for me to take trips lasting an hour to a few hours dressed in my doh-buk (tkd uniform) and carrying my black bag of sparring gear. The black bag was a medium sized piece of luggage containing a chest guard, shin guards, fore arm guards, a soft helmet, a mouthpiece, and a groin guard I tried not to use. I found that while quite a few kicks landed on my groin by accident sometimes, the pain didn?t seem any less with it on and it cut down my agility quite a bit. More importantly, it gave me an unbelievably uncomfortable wedgie.
I would go to tournaments with this black bag and a feast in the back of the station wagon. My mother had a desire to feed all my friends and my teachers and possibly the state of New York with Korean food. My friends didn?t object and my Korean instructors definitely did not complain about a home made Korean meal. When I went home, the food was gone but there was always a trophy in the space the food was placed. I was usually passed out in the passenger seat reclined all the way back. Even a few two minute rounds can drain all the energy from a sixteen year old. My head had a comfortable home in the familiar grooves of the gray head rest. This too became a routine.
The emerald green Ford Taurus drove me from tournament to tournament. It drove me to practice, to exhibitions, and to demonstrations. It bore witness to my career in tae kwon do and was familiar with it possibly more so than my instructor since it never missed a thing.
This is why I felt nervous, although I didn?t know why I did then, on my way to the state championships. The Taurus had to go into the dealership because of a small trinket or something like that. The factory issued a nation wide recall order the week before what became my last tournament. My sister?s car was what I rode to West Point where the state tournament was held. It was an SUV and had ample room but I couldn?t nap on the way there or back. It was a noticeable enough diversion from my routine that my mother took note of it. When I got there, I felt my left hand tremble just a little bit before my first match of the day. My heart seemed in my throat and I found it difficult to swallow.
Somehow, I made it to the finals of the tournament. My instructor wasn?t surprised as I never lost a sparring match in all of the anxious tournaments I had fought in. My mother was busy video taping me as she did in every tournament I went. It was a running joke that while my mom insisted in recording everything to tape, she missed the most important parts of a tournament and why I went to them, namely, me fighting. She couldn?t bear to see me hit someone else or even worse, get hit by another person while she stood a safe distance away. In every fight she attempted to record, you would hear her gasp as the first kicks were thrown and the camera would immediately point downwards to her sensible shoes.
I went home feeling strangely unreleased and not relaxed. My trophy was sitting in the back after I won the last fight. It wasn?t much of a fight as the two fighters were already exhausted from the day?s frequent matches. Both of us fought conservatively and my opponent scored more technical points leaving me defeated going into the second round. In the first five seconds of the second round, he did something foolish maybe out of over confidence in his points or from being too tired. He charged in head first and I kicked it hard enough to knock his helmet off. He collapsed; I knocked him out and I won. I was too tired to speak to my overjoyed instructor and my mom on the walk back to the car. I couldn?t sleep in the hour and a half drive back. I couldn?t find the groove for my head in this car.
When I arrived home, I briefly showed off to my sisters the state trophy. Immediately afterwards, I placed it in the back of the Taurus (freshly returned that afternoon from the dealer) much to the curiosity of the rest of my family except for my mom. I left it in there overnight and she understood why.
On a training accident after my biggest win, I tore my anterior crucial ligament in my left knee. I actually didn?t even realize anything was wrong until my knee gave out without any warning and I landed on the floor in extreme pain. I tried to walk it off thinking maybe it was just a muscle spasm at the wrong time. I found I couldn?t walk without a severe limp. I iced it for a few days and limped around for a few more. I eventually gained the ability to walk again with an unnoticeable limp. I couldn?t practice tae kwon do however as my knee kept giving out causing me unbearable pain each time I tried to do anything remotely fancy. I finally consented going to the hospital for an MRI. The doctor yelled at me which I didn?t appreciate. He was angry at me for taking so long to get myself to a specialist. But he couldn?t fix me; not really, I only had surgery on threat of future pain from arthritis. They opened my knee up and inserted all sorts of tubes and cameras and installed a fake ligament to replace the natural one that didn?t hold up. It took me a few months to get walking again normally after agonizing physical therapy. I started sitting in the back of the Taurus instead of the front and made myself a new groove. My bloated knee and crotches prevented me from sitting shotgun. The car took me to the hospital and brought me back home. I rode it to physical therapy and to my last checkup at the hospital.
The summer of my high school graduation was when my mother became sick. There was always someone in my immediate and not so immediate family in the hospital room with her. Nobody told me, her only son and youngest child of four, that she was near her deathbed. But I could guess even at 17 that having to wear surgical masks when I came to visit her was not for just ceremonial purposes. And that the tube sticking out of her back sucking out fluids was not a normal accessory in most hospital rooms. I came to visit my mother a lot that summer usually bringing a book or two with me. I would stay for more than my shift required of me tolerating my own warm breath as the elastic bands of the surgical mask kept biting into my skin. I was leaving for college in a couple of weeks and it was a distance but at least still in the same state. I felt guilty. In the spring, I argued with her quite a bit about attending a private college more than six hours away. She argued I should go to a state school nearby. I received not only a full scholarship but also a spending stipend to attend the state college thirty minutes away. A state college that was actually more reputable for my intended major.
I guess it didn?t make sense to her why her little boy was trying oh so desperately hard to leave her. I guess it didn?t make sense to me why my mother was trying to discourage me from making my own mind about the first real adult decision of my life. It makes sense to me now why I shed a few tears driving by myself up to my college.
It came time for me to leave. Nobody had the time to go up with me for moving into my dorm as there was still a family emergency at the hospital. None of my friends were going to the same college or anywhere near it. Most of them decided on the excellent choice of nearby schools around NYC. I was going away from home for the first time in my life by myself. I did not feel particularly sad about myself or my situation. I did not and I still do not tolerate self-pity as it is the biggest waste of time and energy. Why spend time feeling sorry for yourself when you can spend that precious time improving what weaker hearts would cry about. I like to think that the fast winds flowing in from the open windows dried my eyes and my tear ducts were forced to secrete moisture for them. I know that I was just glad to have a piece of home coming up with me in the form of a not so elegant but not so ugly emerald green station wagon.
My Taurus is now about eight years old. It?s been in quite a few accidents and quite a few auto shops. This emerald green station wagon has been driven from New York to Florida to California to New York. It?s made quite a few treks to upstate New York and has visited parts of Canada. Now under my care, the speedometer no longer functions and the radiator leaks. Repairs that are being held off as long as possible as this poor college student scrounges up some spare money that doesn?t seem to exist anywhere other than the comfortable residence of his imagination. Even with these ailments my car really moves. I feel most confident and secure when I?m behind the wheel, I know her pretty well and all the little quirks. We like to have fun on the road and I like to drive hard, she might be getting a little too old for it though as I hear her creak and croan when I go a little too fast. I know though that I?m somehow safer in this car and when it counted, I won?t be let down. This car has seen me realize the vulnerability of life itself on a rainy 495. It?s seen me win when I thought it wasn?t my style to win. And it?s seen me humbled when I won too often. Most importantly, it reminded me of who I am and it won?t ever let me forget where I came from.
I don?t believe in objects holding any kind of sacred power other than our own superstitious perceptions of those objects giving them power. It has occurred to me that any sort of affection I feel for this rusting hunk of green colored steel has to be one of the silliest notions that has crossed this otherwise quite cynical mind. Yet I don?t wonder why I still feel like the luckiest driver in the world.
I enjoyed it. It was kind of sappy at certain points, but overall well-written. True story?
Facebook
Twitter