05.14.2008 - 11:08 a.m.

I’m not the kind of person who has an inherent driving style—I tune to the car I am driving. Like when I lived with my parents, there was a Crown Victoria station wagon, which I drove experimentally, curious about its turning radius in parking lots or its capacity to hold my brother’s entire band and collection of amps and equipment.

There was also a Civic hatchback, stick shift, which I drove as if it were invisible, leaving me skimming along the road unencumbered by machinery. For whatever reason, possibly involving my brother’s preference for the Civic, I felt more at ease in the station wagon.

In the first car I owned myself, an aging DeVille, my driving was ponderous and relaxed, almost like a limo driver’s. Sure, I would speed once in a while, or gun it at a stoplight, but always, always responsibly. Smoothly.

In the Miata, my first (and probably last) car bought new, my driving was snappy, precise, and a bit frivolous. I kept the radio loud, and I wasn’t ashamed to belt a song out along with it. Even when I didn’t know the words.

In my husband’s pickup, my driving is one-handed and as sloppy as the steering. I tend to keep the radio on one of the hard-rock stations, and I slouch in the seat. I ride the gas pedal, sometimes punching it just to feel it shudder as it tries to switch too many gears. I am the most careless driver I have ever been.

The Ford Escort I’m driving while the insurance people decide on fault is four years older than my driver's license. In it, my driving is economical and defensive, maybe even a bit paranoid. As little as it is worth in real terms, as much as I dislike it, this car is more precious than the others have been—it is borrowed, and thus not mine to break, and for the first time in my life, it is a necessity, not a luxury. I don’t even turn on the radio.

But today when I cracked the windows, driving to work, the air was warm and summer-sweet, and it smelled the same as it ever had with the top down in my Miata. So long as there’s a road, so long as that road is the same one that winds through Utah, over the Rockies, out to San Francisco or up to New York, I’ll be okay.

-stonebridge

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