I Don't Have a Headache, I Have a Thirteen-Year-Old

I'm driving Daughter to school one day last week and I know I've got to tell her that she lost her allowance for the week but I'm dreading it. Am I dreading it because I hate to take away her money? No, she's miserly enough that she's probably got millions stashed around the house. Am I dreading it because it's too harsh a punishment for a few missed chores -- in other words, is my mother's heart weakening? Again, no. This child misses so many chores so much of the time, she has to have missed egregious amounts to finally lose her allowance. If I just counted the chores she made for me by her constant carrying things from one area of the house and dropping them off in another, I would earn a tidy allowance.

I'm dreading breaking it to her because there are better places than the interior of a car to have a thirteen-year-old pitch a fit and start screaming her head off.

But I can't resist. It's become our fight-a-day, the ride to school, whatever she's mad about that particular day, and this, her money, she will scream about all the way there: As I leave our neighborhood, turn onto the major street, drive down three miles, turn again, drive up two miles, and deposit her at the school doors, only the door slamming shut restoring the car to silence. 

She breaks the sound barrier as we drive down the road. Maybe even the windows. And that's when I realize I have a headache. And then I think, wait a minute. It's kind of early for a headache - only eight in the morning! I haven't really even done enough today to get a headache. Then then I realize the truth: I don't have a headache, I have a thirteen-year-old.

When Daughter was born, Husband and I looked on her with some bewilderment. After all, our first baby had weighed a pound and a half at birth. Who was this gigantic, loud, crying, jaundiced child, weighing in at a whopping six pounds nine ounces? Bar Mitzvahzilla hadn't even gone home with us for nearly ten weeks. We practically had to break him out of the hospital at the end, the doctors were so reluctant to release him, so reluctant to try him on outside air. But with Daughter there was no delay; she was ours driving home just a few days after birth.

Husband and I had been rightfully worried about Bar Mitzvahzilla -- born so tiny, he had come home with an apnea monitor and oxygen tubing. Once he moved out of our bedroom, we bought a sophisticated monitor just so we could listen to his every sound. If I could have crawled in the crib with him, honestly, I would have. But after Daughter moved out of our room and proved that her cries needed no amplification, no monitor, no microphone, to travel from one side of the house to the other, we gave the monitor away. We both felt completely confident that this child wasn't going anywhere without yelling her head off.

Of course, we were right. And, of course, I don't have a headache, just a little residual thirteen-year-old, recently disembarked from the car, clearing up a little later in the day, and to return about pickup time.

Have you lived through your child's adolescence? Did you find that they had just the right combination of screams to bring on a headache? Any baby screamers not needing monitors?

The Better Version of Me

Bar Mitzvahzilla is in the summer football strength training program for the high school he'll be attending in the fall. We're carpooling with a neighbor whose son is also in the training and this neighbor and I have marvelled in the past at all the things we have in common. We drive the same car. We live in the same neighborhood. We're both from Chicago. Both of our sons were preemies but are fine now. There are other little things.

So the other day was my first time to drive her son home from training. He got in the car, pushed over some of the garbage Daughter had scattered all over the backseat and I say, jovially, I think, "This car is just like your mom's. Just dirtier."

Then Bar Mitzvahzilla looks over at me with a smug look on his face. He says, "Yeah mom, except for her GPS and DVD player."

I look at my empty dash, where the GPS should be and the roof where the DVD player should be and say, "Oh."

"And her car is spotlessly clean." The absolute joy of having a teenager! First he destroys the car by spilling every known object and food in it, and then he insults me for having a messy car. And the joy of needling me!

I look at him.

The neighbor kid, a polite person, unlike my son, pipes up from the back, "My dad can't stand for either of our cars to have a speck of dirt on them so he gets my mom's car cleaned every week."

It's then that I realize that my neighbor is actually living the better version of my life. Her car, while the same model, is highly upgraded and clean. Her husband, a neatnik, keeps it clean. She has a high-powered executive job and I am, um, whatever this is. She has a weekly cleaning lady. I have to trade Bar Mitzvahzilla time on his Xbox to get the toilets cleaned. Final proof: during the break between summer sessions, their family is going to Vancouver, which is in Canada; we're going to Flagstaff. If you don't know where that is, look at a map of the State of Arizona. It's where I-40 and I-17 intersect. Not quite as glamorous.

I drive back into our neighborhood, dejected. As we turn the corners to swing around to their house - a basement model of my one-story with about 500 more square feet - all the garbage in the back of my car shifts and crunches with each turn. There's dead silence except for the movement of the garbage.

I drop him off, make a U-turn and my kids and I make our filthy way home.

Did you ever feel that your life might be mirroring someone else's, but not necessarily in a good way? Do you ever feel like certain components of your life are evidence that your whole life is a wreck - like me and my wreck of a backseat? Ever raised a snotty teenager?

Talk Radio

I was driving with Daughter and her best friend this weekend when the request I've come to dread came from the backseat: "Mom, can you turn on the radio?"

Okay, I really have just got to put a stop to this already. The answer from now on has to be, "No. Really I can't turn on the radio." First of all, I'm so old now that I have almost all the channels preset to NPR. And the ones that aren't on NPR were hijacked by Husband and set to classic rock or rhythm and blues stations. Either way, it's not exactly what two ten-year-olds had in mind.

They persist, telling me that they want a certain specific station, then watch as I try to use my limited brain cells to drive the car and figure out how to find a radio station. After all, I've only owned my car three years, not long enough to have mastered the scan button on the stereo. I'm lucky I know how to turn it on.

I find the station and it turns out it's Rap. This is when you know your daughter's not a little girl anymore. What, no Radio Disney? What about those nice High School Musical CDs we got a few years ago? How about Selena Gomez? Stony silence. I feel myself aging.

In that exact moment I turn into my grandfather. I say, "Is this music?" I even get a little Old Country accent. My voice gets a lilt. My hand waves in the air dismissively. How did I turn into my grandfather?

Here's what I remember. It was the late 1960s. Neither he nor my grandmother knew how to drive but my mother would careen over to their West Rogers Park apartment in Chicago in her tiny red Chevy Nova to get them each Saturday. Then my grandfather, with his diabetic legs that were all walked out, would sit in our house all day and into the night watching the kaleidescope of his granddaughters as we flew in and out of one door or another, running in and out of rooms, and as we played music on our HiFi system.

My grandfather would shake his head wonderingly at the noise coming out of the stereo. He'd say, "This is music?" And I'd say, "Yes, Zayda. It's the Beatles and the Monkees!" And he'd say, "Is it music or animals?" And I'd have to think.

The girls don't know that I just turned into my own grandfather in the front seat of my car. They're singing along - or talking along - with the rapper. Then Daughter's friend says, "You know, I'm not sure if this is music because he's just talking." And right then, with just the tiniest bit of wavering in the backseat, I click the radio off.

Is it startling when music you loved is suddenly referred to as classics? Do you remember relatives questioning whether the music you liked was music at all? Have you had a "generation gap" with your kids yet with music?

Horse Power

We moved to Phoenix in 1973, when I was thirteen years old. Things were a little primitive around here. Of course, I had come from Chicago, where things were pretty urban. There were the dirt roads. There were the pick up trucks. And there were a lot of cowboys and horses, but not exactly how I had seen them in the movies. These cowboys lived in the houses around the school I went to and when it was time to go to school each day they'd ride their horses there. It was a little bit like living in a Western movie.

We also owned a scrubby acre in north Phoenix just like everyone else, with the back part given over to a bunch of tumbleweeds, the middle section holding the house and swimming pool, and the front being a vast expanse of rocks, which we called a lawn. However, since my family was filled with teenaged drivers, the empty part of our acre was also filled with something else: cars.

This area of our acre, generally crowding around the garage, looked a little like a used car lot. There was a 1969 Ford Town and Country station wagon, a 1970 Chevy Impala, an exploding gas tank Pinto station wagon, a bland, beige 1975 Chevy Nova, one sister’s orange Karmann Ghia, and our father’s 1970 Chevy Silverado Truck. All parked, all molding in the Arizona sun. My sisters would pick one each day to drive, guessing which one might work, which might take us the miles to school and then to our family produce market.  It was an important decision. There were absolutely no service stations for miles.

Luckily my mother had one ace up her sleeve to rescue us from every situation: her AAA card. With it, she could get us towed off any roadway. And it was transferable to any member of her family, so during our teen years we almost ran AAA into bankruptcy with all of us breaking down all over Arizona in the various household cars, in our boyfriend’s cars, in Mom’s boyfriends’ cars, at least one a day all over town, the tow trucks’ flashing lights beating a path to wherever we were stuck.


Once towed, we never knew where to take the cars for repairs. It's not like we had any money. If only we'd had a horse. Normally they were just towed back home where they’d get deposited steaming, overheating, and clunking. Then we’d just let the cars simmer, let them lie fallow and stir in their own juices. We’d hope that maybe the cars would heal themselves. So they'd sit there dormant and stagnant, with us hoping that if we went back out there in a couple weeks, put the key in the ignition, they'd work. And the strange thing? Sometimes they did.
 
Before I ever knew how to drive, I knew how to open a radiator cap gingerly and put water in it to stop it from exploding or power steering fluid to stop it from groaning around corners. My first car after college  graduation college was so broken that the driver's side door didn't open; when I went to job interviews I had to crawl out of the passenger's side in my suit, over the center console.

And even though it's been over twenty years since I had a really bad car, the legacy of being seen as trashy because my car was trashy has stayed with me. Each day when I go out to my car in the garage and I see it I'm filled with gratitude for what it's not. Let there be no mistaking it: I love you, Car.

Did you ever drive a car you dreaded to get in? An absolute embarassment? Are you still traumatized by the memories like me? Did any of your classmates ride horses to school like mine did?

I didn't mean to, but I guess this is my second entry in the Momalom Love It Up Valentine's Day Challenge. Thanks, guys, for letting me reflect on how grateful I am for not having to drive those old wrecks anymore!

Pimp My Honda

I’m sitting in my driveway on a cool night watching Daughter cruise down the street on Bar Mitzvahzilla's bicycle. I’m getting baleful glares from her because she’s stuck riding his bike - it’s a red and black Mongoose and has racing stripes. She’s not especially girly, but still. She doesn’t want to be seen on this contraption. As a matter of fact, Bar Mitzvahzilla has abandoned the bike to her.

In the caste system of unspoken eighth grade politics, it’s apparently not cool to ride a bike anymore, or not a Mongoose anyway. Bar Mitzvahzilla remains undecided on what type of bike will be cool enough not to make him lose face. He's mulling this over and it's quite a puzzle.  All he really knows for sure at this awkward age of fourteen is what kinds of cars are cool.

His first choice: a Lamborghini. I advise him he is not getting a Lamborghini.

He sighs heavily, frustrated by the fact that we don’t have any cool cars in our household.

“Mom, why don’t you drive a Mustang or a Camaro?”

I have to think over, mull over the impossibility of driving around in a car that makes teenage boys want to race me.  I try to explain this.

"Then why not dad?"

I think about this.  What would it take to get my very practical husband into a Mustang or Camaro? Probably a midlife crisis.  Right now my husband’s idea of a midlife crisis would be to do something really wild, like not take out the garbage can on trash day.

How did my Jewish son develop such an affinity for muscle cars? His forebears on my side of the family drove peddlers wagons in the Old Country. My father drove a series of wood-paneled station wagons that, even after he sold them, would just keep showing up at our house, embarassing nightmares from our past, loaners from the repair shop he had sold them to. My mother, at seventy-nine, careens through town in a souped up Toyota Matrix.

On my husband’s side of the family, Bar Mitzvahzilla's obsession with muscle cars is even more bewildering. Husband’s father was a mild-mannered pharmacist, a non-driver, who had to take three buses to his job each day working at a drug store in downtown Milwaukee. He finally got a car when Husband was a teenager.

So, no, Bar Mitzvahzilla's not getting a Lamborghini, or a Mustang, a Camaro or his other choice, a Challenger. My husband says his own Honda will be just the right age to be passed down to Bar Mitzvahzilla when he turns sixteen.

He's at first horrified. Then he starts mulling over customization opportunities: custom wheels - spinners? Custom paint?

Wood paneled sides?

Car Talk

The four of us - Husband, Daughter, Bar Mitzvahzilla, and me - were stuck in our car for a while tonight driving across town for a play, and here's the interesting thing I suddenly remembered about being in a car with Daughter:  she doesn't stop talking.  If she's got an off button, I haven't found it in the ten years since she was born.

I was talking to Husband about something that seemed interesting to us but which, apparently, was not interesting to Daughter.  So she brought up something that was interesting to her.  Were we aware that she can recite all the multiples of seven, all the way to eighty-four?  And that she can do it really fast?  Faster than anyone else in her class? 

Well, no, actually, we weren't aware of that, but -

And then she's off and running.  The multiples of seven up to eighty-four.

So we give her the requisite amount of attention for her speed multiplying and then, while she's taking a breath, we try to resume our conversation.  Of course, we're not going to be that lucky because she's not taking a breath just to breathe or anything.  She's taking a breath so that she can start reciting multiples of nine and then fives and then twos.  And the twos she can recite to infinity.

Husband and I give up on our conversation.

Car and Driver

Husband and I fight for several easily categorized reasons.

First we fight because I'm an inept fool in the kitchen and can never figure out anything nutritious to feed Bar Mitzvahzilla and Daughter. Despite this, and bewilderingly, they continue to grow. Husband isn't convinced by this evidence. He'd like to see some changes, like the introduction of the crockpot into my lexicon.

The second reason we fight is because after the kids eat whatever I pop out of the microwave, rather than them driving me nuts all night while I wait for Husband to come home, I park them in the front of the TV. Well, not quite. First homework and two chores, then TV. This allows Inept Mom to write. Of course, Husband thinks there should be no TV. I totally blame it on him that the last TV series I watched on an ongoing basis was Seinfeld.

These disagreements are almost manageable. The one area that can get ugly is when Husband is driving the car and I'm the passenger.

Husband's theory of driving is wound up with the preservation of the household vehicles - he wants them to last one hundred years. He wants us to drive our cars until they fall to pieces beneath us in the roadway and we're left jogging to our destination. To this end, his driving technique - he has a technique -is intended to reduce wear and tear to all car parts. He never wants to pay for repairs for anything that could have been used more tenderly.

To preserve the brakes, Husband will scan the roadway ahead - like ten miles ahead. If he sees the tiniest hint of a red traffic signal anywhere - like even with binoculars - he takes his foot off the gas and starts decelerating. Why speed up to get to a red light?, he asks. This creates quite a problem in the roadway. People start passing us and honking at us; suddenly there's an island around us, a slo-mo island.

He also takes courtesy too far. If we're driving past the entrance of a building, he's a little too meek. He'll scan the store; he'll scan inside the store. Is there anyone at the checkout stand who might be coming towards the parking lot sometime soon? If so, then he'll slam on the brakes, nearly sending me through the windshield.

I was raised in a family in which we never plan to keep our cars. When the payments stop, we get rid of them. We are constantly seduced by shinier, newer models, or we want a different color. If something breaks, that's it. We want that car towed away, never to be seen again, even if it just needs a battery. Since we're not rich people, this can cause some problems.

Husband only has one thing to say about my complaints: he asks me if I'd like to drive.

Lead Foot

I have a reasonable amount of credibility in my family, by which I mean that if I say something happened, the people in my family normally believe me. Like if I yell out, "Scorpion!" my husband will show up with the scorpion spray, he won't come to inspect whether it actually is a scorpion while it runs away under our bed.

So, when I kept telling Husband this week that my car was having a hard time starting, since he's in charge of our cars, it would have been nice if he would have given me some credibility. Then a light came on in my dashboard that included an exclamation point. My car, normally mute, was trying to tell me something. I know the rules of writing and the use of exclamation points - they are to be used sparingly. They connote excitement, urgency. So I sat up and took notice.

The light in the dash finally got Husband moving, especially because he could finally use some of the dust-covered tools he's bought and stored in our garage. First he just got to use the tire gauge to measure the air pressure, but then, for true excitement, he got to turn on the thunderous air compressor and fill those tires up.

This afternoon, however, the car stopped moving. Husband had paid attention to the most apparent issue - the exclamation point in the dash - but hadn't paid attention to the other issue, the car barely starting. Luckily, the car worked fine for everything that I leisurely did today: exercise, shopping, a meeting, lunch. It was just when I was about to do what I'm actually supposed to do - picking up Bar Mitzvahzilla and Daughter from school - that the car wouldn't start. Because Husband is a slave to our carpet store, I had to call my mother to rescue us, which entailed her zooming over in her souped up, bare-bones Toyota Matrix, and then taking me on the ride from hell.

My mother didn't start driving until she was 34. She had a car before then, a faded red Chevy Nova, which was parked under the tree in front of our house in Skokie. She was afraid to learn to drive so it just sat there rusting under the tree while she schlepped out of the house each day with her baby buggy and shopping baskets and 7 daughters, going grocery shopping at the National store about 5 blocks away. Finally, in 1964, she learned how to drive and, as she proudly told me today while she hugged the center line, braked hard for dips in the road, and sped up as she approached red lights, she's never had an accident in 45 years. Maybe if she tries harder.

We got the kids and then my mother briefly considered letting me drive her car. It was like high school again: me, the anxious, shifty teenager waiting for the car keys to drop into my hand so I could zoom out to a boondocker in the desert. Then she shook her head. No, she couldn't risk it. I've only been driving 32 years. That's not long enough.

So she put the pedal to the metal to get us back home. After a few more close calls, we got there.