Life is a journey, enjoy the ride

Ilene Black

Betting On Black

By Ilene Black

The last time we bought a new car was back in 2011. I bought my husband George a car for Christmas. A huge, sweeping, majestic gesture, wouldn’t you agree? I felt like a Kardashian. “Merry Christmas. Oh, here’s a little something I picked up for you.” I will never be able to top that Christmas gift, nor do I ever intend to try. For the past several years, I have been driving my dad’s car. It was a 2008 Chevy Impala and at last count, the odometer read 47,000+ miles. My dad used to drive it to Shop Rite, to church, and to buy his lottery tickets. Dad bought the car from my 95 year old great uncle. Uncle Jimmy drove like a maniac. He would whip past my house, make a K-turn down the street (we knew he was coming from the hornblowing and the line of traffic that would build up while he was maneuvering the car) and speed up to our curb. He’d get out of the car and toss his keys to George or one of our sons, ordering them to park it for him. But surprisingly, the car was in good shape, all things considered. I don’t think the back seat was ever sat on! Anyway, George and I decided that we needed a small SUV. We do craft shows, so the cargo space in an SUV would allow us to get more creative with our displays. So we researched and weighed the possibilities. Our son Donnie and his wife Michelle had just gotten a Nissan Rogue and loved it. After we checked out the cargo space in their Rogue, we decided to get our own.

Blah blah blah….we found the SUV we liked, we test-drove it, we argued the price, we argued the junk fees, we (I) did a lot of pointing and saying things like, “Really? What exactly is THIS fee?”, we bought it.

The salesman did a not-so-brief explanation of the bells and whistles of the car. I paid attention, but I was hungry and thirsty and I wanted to go home. So after the tutorial, he gladhands us and it’s time to go. I drove the car home. Eventually.

Now you must understand, the highest automobile tech that I have ever experienced was dad’s car radio. It showed the radio station, the artist and the song title. The car required a key to start it. As a result, and despite the lengthy tutorial that our salesman conducted, I had no idea how to turn the car on. There was no place to stick the key into. And oh by the way, there WAS NO KEY!

I sat in that dealer parking lot, studying the vast airplane cockpit dashboard of tech, until I finally, after about ten minutes, saw the start button. I started the car and for the first time in my life, used a backup camera to reverse. I didn’t completely trust the camera though, so I looked behind me while reversing.

On the drive home, cars were zipping past me and coming up behind me. I could not believe the nerve of these people. Why did they have to drive near me? And also, I noticed that the road department had narrowed all the highway lanes to about a foot wide. Everyone was crowding me badly. I spent that whole drive home flinching and yelling “Back up off me” and using my brake a lot. Thank God I knew where the brake was.

Now, I find any excuse to drive the new car. “Oh, we ran out of toothpicks? I’ll go and pick some up.” “Wait, we don’t have any Sri Lankan whole nutmeg? I’ll just run out and grab a bunch.” “There’s no more Disney Mickey Mouse Exploding Creme Filled Coco Ball Cookies left? Let me drive to every grocery store I know and see if I can find some.” “Need a ride to your vacation rental in the Outer Banks? Just let me gas up.”

So if you see a gracefully aging blonde woman driving a new Nissan Rogue around town and she’s grinning from ear to ear, wave from a distance and don’t drive near her.

Black has been a resident of Ewing for most of her life and lives across the street from her childhood home. She and her husband, George, have two sons, Georgie and Donnie.