The Beastly Wagon

My Mama's red station wagon was the bomb. This was exactly it. Except it was fire engine red.

With burn-your-thighs red seats.

We had this car back when it was ok to leave your kids in the car while you ran in somewhere. So me and brother spent a lot of time in this beast. A lot. And we fought like hell in there too. We'd have serious kick fights in the backseat while Mom was in the grocery store and I'd flip him over the seat so fast that he'd get a little carpet burn on his cheek from the carpet in the back-back. I can remember some specifics about the interior too. One was that you could chew on the corner of the front head rest and you could never get enough of it. It felt good. Not sure why. It just did. Another was you could write your name in the roof of the car with your finger and it would stay there until your brother ran his thumb across it. We did that so much that finally we had to safety pin the material back into the squishy foam because it sort of became a driving hazard. I can remember many, many trips where the lull of the "ticka-ticka" sound the engine made would put me right to sleep.

This car smelled like poo and in the dead heat of a SC summer, a red car was anything but cool. And when you're a tween, a red beat up station wagon with the roof hanging on your head was for sure, anything but cool. But if I had a dream tonight where I was in a parade going down a road of childhood memories, my float would be that red station wagon.

Daddy is mad at me about my car. He says its a piece. It's not a piece. I have 2 kids, 2 dogs and a cat who all like to drop things and slobber on windows. I live at the beach and in the summertime, there's gonna be a lot of sand in my car. Don't tell anyone else this, but I eat and secretly love fast food and I eat a ton of that in there and constantly find McDonald's french fries between my seats  that are 2 months old but still look just as good as new.

So what if Pepper stinks. So what if she goes "ticka-ticka" too. She's got a job to do and she does it well. Just like Betsy the beastly Wagon did.