Like most 16 year olds, the very thought of owning your own
car and breaking away from your parents bosom, brings about a sweet euphoria of
life without parental supervision. But like most 16 year olds funds of
producing this thought is crushed by the economic reality of not having the
means of buying your own car. This may be due to the fact that those of us who
never had an allowance had about as much change in his pocket as an adult in
Burundi. Picking up a part time job washing semi-trailers may help pay for a
tank of gas, but it still doesn't make you enough to avoid driving your mom's
Dodge caravan. If I had cool parents I could have been learning how to drive a
stick in a classic 69 Dodge Charger or maybe cruising around the streets of LA
in a new (at the time) Lexus sc300. But believing my parents could no longer
punish me like they use to when I was a child, found a whole new punishment
befitting my rebellious years. Enter the 1990 Dodge Caravan.
Normally I would be appalled and detest the very idea of
being seen in such a pathetic excuse of a vehicle. But at 16 and full of
vinegar it provided me the one thing I never had experienced until then.
Freedom. Pure uninterrupted freedom. But like with all freedom it comes a
price, and this price was leaving your Manmarbles in the driveway before
stepping into the van. No matter, this new luxury abled me to go and do things
I never could before. Up till then my previous boyhood expansion of the known
universe was limited by peddle bike and how much sugar and caffeine I had
earlier that day.
To say the van was a flying death trap would be an
understatement. It had more shakes than a Turkish belly dancer, The windows
would randomly fall off, and the steering wheel even committed suicide in
mothers lap one afternoon. Can't say I blame it. It could have been steering a
F1 driver around Monaco, or chasing a bad guy in the streets of San Francisco.
But no, it had chauffeur soccer moms around the suburbs instead. Our Caravan
was the color of duct tape and had an aerodynamic efficiency of a lead casket.
This too is good news, because they won't have to look hard to find one to bury
you in. Too bad that no one would be caught dead seen in it - that is, until
the next time you and your pubescent friends want to go out on the town, and
this meant parading the strip.
Now "the strip" should be considered a sociological
experiment in itself. Those of us, who haven't snuck into the bars by 9pm, are
now subjected to the animalistic calls of the night life on a strip of paved
depravity. This may be the only time in recorded history where one could get
away picking up the opposite sex in unfashionable manner, because both she
knows and you know that you’re driving on borrowed time. The whole idea of
picking up girls on the strip is complete and utter nonsense. Your style is
terrible, your face is breaking out, you’re neither a boy nor a man and your
changing voice proves that. I found it hard enough to talk females without all
these challenges going on - but add matching the speed of your vehicle with
that, the adolescent girl is driving, and trying to say something witty enough
for them to smile at you, is like juggling Dobermans on fire while shaving
blindfolded - apocalyptic failure. It never did have the romanticism of
American Graffiti, but despite all obstacles and handicaps, you conjure up a
wink, or maybe a smile, or *gasp* her phone number. Too bad that too will be
called from your parents borrowed house phone...
