As I mentioned earlier we spent a lot of of trips to
Colorado in various states of danger and proto-danger. One time, and
this is when I was fourteen and a half, my mom got really deathly ill
with the flu or pneumonia or something and we didn't have enough
money to keep staying there in Colorado. Even though she was really
sick she decided to start off and try and power it on home. My
grandpa filled us up with gas and away we went. We had traveled about
50 miles or so to Denver and my mom was getting worse and worse so
she pulled over to rest. She was so deathly ill, shaking and feverish
she asked me if I could drive for a little while while she rested. I
had this glamorous fantasy version of driving like many kids do when
they're 14 or 15; driving embodies coolness and liberation. When she
asked me to take the wheel it felt nothing like that, in fact much
more like the bottom had fallen out of my stomach and I was cold and
feverish at the same time. She was in the passenger seat and I was
driving absolutely terrified, so I was driving too slow, but she told
me I had to go at least the speed limit or I would arouse suspicion.
I sweated, and I could feel it dripping down my sides and down my
back as I strained all the way forward and kept the car at exactly 55
emm-pee-aches. Thirty miles outside of Denver I got behind a U-haul
trailer going west that was also going only 55 and I rode him for two
hours all the way to the Rifle turn off when he turned north and left
me to my own devices. When my mom woke up from her nap I had driven
all the way from Denver to just outside of Grand Junction. She took
back over and drove us home. My back and armpits dried up and I fell
right to sleep having been emotionally and physically drained by my
ordeal.
Admittedly, in retrospect, it doesn't seem so epic to
have piloted a car with an automatic transmission in good weather for
four hours on a freeway. All I had to do was push the go and stop
peddles and keep it between the 'mayonnaise and the mustard' as the
truckers say. The real payoff was that my brother and sisters and my
mom didn't tell anybody how terrified I was. That left the door wide
open to a much more heroic retelling. In my version I sounded a lot
less like a scared teenager trying to help his mom out and more like
John Wayne bringing in the wagon train safe and sound, little lady.
It didn't go exactly like that but don't tell.
