I'm on Top of the World

Last month we moved to our new home in Provo, Utah. It is a beautiful area, we love the neighborhood, we love the spaciousness of the house, and we feel absolutely spoiled being here. Christmas is going to look great! The kitchen is wide open and has a fireplace! Lots of bedrooms for our sprawling offspring! (Hmm. Sprawling Offspring. Did I just stumble upon the title for my memoirs?) Trees surround the house and the wind whispers through them. The view from the back deck is breathtaking.


Have I painted a pretty enough picture for you? Because I am now going to tell you what TERRIFIES me about this house.


It's on top of the most giant hill in the world. Seriously, you guys, uh-THE GIANTIST! If this hill was a rollercoaster track and this house was the car, I would NOT go down it. (And I've never backed down from a rollercoaster ride yet. Becaues I'm extremely brave. But I WOULD on this one!)

Every time I drive home from work I begin praying AND fasting (just for the drive home, and also after I have my driving-home snack) that I will make it up the hill! I drive a Camry, you guys. A 2005 Cam-freaking-ry! (Is that where you place “freaking?” I don't use a lot of C-level swears.)


So I'm almost home and I begin ascending Mt. Kilimanjaro, and I bust through the atmosphere and the Delta-airline-manufactured oxygen mask drops from my car ceiling (it was an anniversary gift from Katie) and I strap it on and then terror sinks in as I contemplate the inevitable...


One day soon, before the end of the year, this hill will be buried in snow. And I will have to drive up it. Or worse. Down it.


In all sincerity, I've had panic attacks about this. I will be lying in bed, lights off and the whole world is still. Trying to dose off, just on the verge of drifting into my night-nights...when the paralyzing image of me attempting to navigate our 12-passenger van careening down the snow-packed slope that is our street overpowers all other thoughts.


I've done preliminary research and asked neighbors who have lived here for years what I should expect. I get everything from, “Oh, yeah, it's treacherous. You'll often have to leave your car at the bottom of the hill. We circulate a list of phone numbers of people on the street who will come pick you up on their snowmobile and take you home,” to “In 30 years I've only ever had to hike home three times. Of course you have a four-wheel drive, right?” And I say, “Of course,” because I don't want them to think I'm the idiot neighbor who has no idea if his Camry has four-wheel drive. (It doesn't, right? I knew it. Cam-freaking-rys!)

The Washed Car

When I was young, my Dad used to get up at six in the morning and head out to the garage to wash his car.  Winter, Spring, Summer, or Fall, he would drag the hose in under the garage door and bathe his favorite son (he had five human ones and one machine one). His specialty was the tires: "I don't understand these guys that drive around in their souped-up Camaros, with every detail toothbrush-cleaned and then have filthy tires!" He was right, of course; the tires are hands down the most gratifying moment of washing the car.  With just some spritz-ez of Armor All, your ten-year-old tire rubber gleams up to a sexy patent leather shine where, at just the right angle, the reflection of the sun can blind a man.  And that's what you want really, in a tire, blinding UV Rays searing other drivers' retinas as you pass, leaving a wake of sightless, but also breathless, wreckage behind you.


When he was 16, my Dad drove a yellow convertible Triumph; let's say this one:

 

And so, when he was 40 he bought himself a brown convertible Triumph; let's say this one:

Notice the red-wall Tires...not white, but RED!

And she was really the one who got my Dad out of bed in the morning to wash the tires.  She was the one who, rather then suck the coolness from him (see: me and my 4 brothers), she fuel injected him with coolness as he cruised low down state street in Orem on his way to his job...at the bank.

I still think of that car, for I loved her, too.  I was the one driving her when she got in her one and only accident.  I was 16 and I had piled in my two friends into her stern.  That's right, one in the passenger and one stuffed into the space where the roof could go if you put it down...tonight, it was up as it was Winter.  We are driving down Freedom Blvd and I see this Cat start to pull out of a parking lot on my right. {I'm using 'Cat' here in the Sinatraesce 'cool kid' lingo, hoping to later contrast my 'hip with-it' youth to the other driver's aged wet blanket squareness...let's see how this turns out.}

Surely he's got to see me, I think to myself.

"Surely he's got to see me," I say out loud to my friends.

He did not. He pulled right out onto the street and into my back right fender. For crying out loud. So I pull over and he pulls over and I jump out with all the fierce righteous convection of any 16-year-old anywhere. He opens the door and the first thing to exit the car is a cane, followed by the most feeble creature I had ever seen.  He was a Jim Henson creation, but not nearly as sturdy as a Muppet, more like those "Dark Crystal" Bird Men that hunched over and shuffled around. As was previously stated, it was Winter and this three legged stick figure starts Dick Van Diking all over the ice. No joke, even in my adolescent fury I could tell that any fierce and cutting remark I could summon would most certainly fall on deaf ears...L. I. T. E. R. A. L. L. Y.     

So I find out that getting into an accident is really just like being in high school; you are forced into being polite to people who deserve your disdain, you go back and forth about who should have done what to get this or that done, and then, after a useless and unproductive conversation involving the authorities, you have to take down information to deal with later...at home.

I finish with Gargamel and head into Smiths to call my home; one of my sidekicks--the one stuffed in the back--has abandoned me and the other is reviewing her options.  This is a terrifying walk.  Only now as I am remembering it do I realize that I had to go INTO Smiths get change for a dollar and find a payphone to call home...weird. So I get the money and I put it into the machine and I look back at my Father's car: the tail light is hanging by a wire, the bumper is lying on the ground at one end, and the fender is crumpled up like a beer can in a bar after the last swig of beer has been swug and the can has been...well, crumpled like my Dad's fender. And even then, at that awful moment, my first and only accident in my life, this crossing a horrible rite of passage, I can't help but think, "At least he didn't scuff the tires."