Driving A Car vs Flying A Plane….. Which Is More Difficult?

Posted on June 1, 2015 by Christine Vanderberg

It’s a known fact in our family that I am the better driver. My husband won’t admit it, but the kids will. They’ve been on enough car rides through the years when their lives were spared in the nick of time by my shouting: STOP! or LOOK OUT!!

He gets annoyed at me, but I don’t care. He tells me, “I was going to stop.”

“When? You were speeding up when everyone else was slowing down!”

“I would have slowed down – eventually. You didn’t give me a chance.”

There are no second chances. That’s my motto, when sitting in the passenger seat with my husband at the wheel. Shout first; question his intentions later.

My mother will vouch for me. She was riding with us, sitting in the back seat, while my husband was driving home from a recent trip to Connecticut. He passed over the yellow line into the adjacent lane, then slid back into our lane…once… twice…The third time I turned to look at him.

Weaving Car“Are you falling asleep?” I asked.

“No. Why?”

“You’re weaving.”

“No, I’m not.”

From the back seat, my mother tapped me hard on the shoulder to affirm my observations.

“Pull over at the next rest stop,” I told him. “I need to use the bathroom.”

Between bathroom stalls, my mother and I discussed the situation.

“Do you think he was weaving?” I asked her.

“Yes! Definitely. I think he drank too much at the party.”

“I think he was falling asleep. Either way, I’ll have to take over the driving.”

“Thank God!” she said.

It’s too bad she didn’t get a chance that night to experience the thrill of one of my husband’s more creative maneuvers. I’ve named it “The Nick of Time Exit,” and it happens when we are in the left lane (we’re always in the left lane), and I hear these words: Oh, S*#t! Is that our exit?! I almost missed it!

I know what’s coming so I start praying in my head…Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee…. With arms folded across my chest, I brace myself by leaning against the door; every muscle in my body is on high alert. Holy Mary, Mother of God…It feels like we are gliding on ice as he slides across two lanes. It happens so quickly, there isn’t enough time to finish the prayer.

I know we are in the clear and safely on the exit ramp when I hear the trail of honking horns left behind in our wake. I uncover my eyes and take deep calming breaths, wiping the sweat from my brow.

“What’s the matter with you?” he asks. “Do you feel alright?”

“You almost got us killed!” I gasp.

“What are you talking about? I had plenty of time.”

There are other racecar driver type maneuvers like the two wheelie illegal U-turns at 35 mph across two lanes of oncoming traffic.

“Weee!” my mother laughed one day as she slid across the back seat while my husband was driving. “It’s a Marlon Brando U-Turn!”

From the back seat it may have felt like a thrilling roller coaster ride, because she couldn’t see the headlights of the oncoming traffic bearing down on us. In the front passenger seat I felt my bowels loosening as I kissed the face of death.

“Can’t you just go a few more feet and make a U-Turn at the traffic light?!” I shouted.

“What for?”

“You just made an illegal U-Turn and almost got us killed!”

“I had plenty of time. Besides, your mother enjoyed it.”

Then there are the lane changes on the parkway without the use of his directional blinkers. How am I supposed to check the blind spots if I don’t know he’s going to change lanes? He’s not checking them; someone has to do it.

Forget about sleeping or reading books in the car when my husband is driving. I never felt safe doing that. I remember trying to sleep with one eye open on our way home from a long trip one night. I have to be totally wasted drunk to sleep in the car when he’s driving – and that only happened once in our 39 years of marriage.

But that’s all about to change now that the car industry has finally put some remarkable safety features in the new cars. While shopping for one this week I was thrilled to see that the two cars we were considering – the Honda Accord and the Subaru Legacy – both had cameras that give forward collision warnings, distance regulation in cruise control mode (prevents you from tailgating), and visual and audible lane departure warning signals. The Honda has a tiny camera in the passenger side mirror that gives a visual display of the right side blind spot. In cruise control, the Subaru will actually stop by itself if it senses an imminent impact with the vehicle in front of you.

Imagine that! No more screaming Stop! Look Out! Watch It! No more jamming my foot down on an invisible passenger side brake. No more craning my neck to check blind spots. No more arguments, loosened bowels, sweating foreheads, muscle tension, white knuckle gripping of the seat, squeezing the door handle or grabbing the hand bar at the top of the roof. Some people hang their dry cleaning on that bar. I use it to control the centrifugal force pulling me into the gear shaft during those “Marlon Brando U-Turns” my mother is so fond of.

There are other problems with the new cars, however. It’s no wonder they’ve included so many safety features to prevent a collision, because the probability of having an accident in one them might be greater than having an accident in an old 1969 Chevy with no seatbelts or air bags installed.

The audio touch-screen display is the reason. It has many different media programs and options galore to play with to get your music sound just the way you like it. It’s a big distraction with all the pop up settings, and I’m afraid the blinking lights and beeping sounds installed as driving safety features will be going off every time my technology challenged husband tries to change the radio station. What if he presses the wrong buttons and calls someone in Russia by mistake?

There is a feature in the media center called Aha. I don’t know what the hell that is and I probably never will, because, by the time I figure out how to program the radio, our 3- year lease will be up. The manual says it can keep me connected with cloud-based access to news, information and social media updates like Facebook.

Well that’s just great. As if talking on the phone while driving wasn’t distracting enough. Now people will be checking Facebook and other cloud-based media. You can also plug in your i-pad to check your e-mail and set the welcome screen with personal photos to coo over while you’re driving.

If your head is in the cloud checking your e-mail or Facebook page, you’re going to be oblivious to the blinking lights and beeping sounds installed as safety features to warn you that you’re about to collide with some little old lady sitting at a traffic light in her new car – with all the same safety features you have– none of which will be able to warn her that you are about to ram into her rear end.

I remember taking a driver-ed class in my 1969 junior year of high school. We weren’t even allowed to turn on the AM radio in the car, because the driving instructor thought it was too distracting to listen to music while driving. 

Seems like you would need a computer car-tech class today just to learn how to work the media panel in my new car. If you can master that and drive the car at the same time, hell, flying a plane through the real clouds would be a breeze.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Watching Men Watching Women

Posted on May 25, 2015 by Christine Vanderberg

Waiting at a traffic light the other day, I watched a young attractive girl in a pair of short-shorts crossing the street. Two young men were also crossing, in the opposite direction, and when they passed each other, the two young men stopped in the middle of the road, turned around, and continued watching the girl’s rear end as she walked further away from them. The guys stood there, stunned, unable to move, as if some otherworldly force had hijacked their brains. They finally snapped out of their trance when the traffic light changed and honking car horns warned them that they were about to be run over.

I thought about ancient cave men and wondered how many of them were trampled to death by wooly mammoths because they turned their heads in the wrong direction and lingered a little too long to stare at a beautiful cave woman running by in nothing but a skimpy leather thong.

Could the ability of men to be so easily distracted by women explain the widening gap in today’s sex ratio between men and women? Studies have shown that, in fact, more baby boys are born than baby girls – a ratio of 107 boys to every 100 girls. But as we get older, the gap grows, so that by age 65 the sex ratio is 132 women to 100 men. By the age of 85, the ratio is 206 women to 100 men. That’s a lot of distracted men getting trampled by wild beasts, run over by cars, tripping down subway steps and slamming into walls.

I did a little research on this fascinating statistic and found that, up until the 17th century, the male to female ratio was about equal. So, what happened in the 17th century that changed all that? Coincidentally, there was a pretty severe wardrobe change to a woman’s dress bodice at that time. The European woman’s 16th century wardrobe revealed nothing about her anatomy or her sexuality.16th century dress

Think of those Queen Elizabeth type portraits showing a flat-chested bodice and yards of ruffle wrapped around the neck and climbing up the back of the head.

By the 17th century, women’s fashion had changed quite dramatically. The new century tore open a woman’s bodice to reveal two plump breasts hiding underneath all that fabric. Bosoms were put on display in open necked dresses, some of which revealed the entire breast – nipple and all.17th century dress-2

A lot of men, no doubt, were walking into walls and falling off their horses. Thus began the widening gap in the male to female ratio, which has continued through our modern day.

Now, this is something you young gals might consider when dressing to go out. If you want your men to survive with you into old age, you might want to dress more modestly – offer up less distraction in an effort to increase the male survival rate for your future. When I was young, I never took this into consideration because the idea of ever appealing to an 85-year-old man was quite a repulsive thought. But, some day, when I’m in the old age home and all of us gals are fighting over the few remaining male dance partners, I’m going to wish I had worn more turtlenecks and longer skirts when I was young.

Who knows how many young men got run over by a car, while watching me cross the street in a pair of short-shorts?

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

Easy Glider Instructions: Purchase, Assemble, Disassemble, Return

Posted on May 18, 2015 by Christine Vanderberg

Several years ago, during one of my sleepless nights, I watched an infomercial for an Easy Glider exercise machine. The ad showed “before and after” photos of real consumers who had used the Easy Glider to transform their overweight formless shapes into chiseled muscular physiques.

Beautiful young people in colorful tights were smiling and gliding effortlessly, while a long legged svelte blond (a previous cheerleader, no doubt) bounced around each of them pointing out different features on the machines. I knew if I had one of those machines I could be one of those beautiful people.

“And how much weight have you lost so far?” the svelte blond asked one of the beautiful people.

“I lost 65 pounds in five months with my Easy Glider,” she said.

“Folks, you, too, can lose up to five pounds in the first week!” the bouncy blond promised. I wasn’t convinced, but continued watching, because something strange and powerful was happening to me. Watching those gliders go up and down, up and down, I felt my mind losing control and drifting into a trance-like state.

Looking back now, I wonder if those machines were synchronized to create a hypnotic state of mind, as my eyes shifted to follow the movement: back and forth and up and down…back and forth and up and down…up and down…

Next thing I knew the telephone was in my hand and I was reading my VISA credit card number and expiration date to someone on the other end of the line.

The machine arrived on a Saturday afternoon, in a heavy compact box. I had to call my husband to help me carry it into the living room.

“What the hell is this?” he asked.

“It’s a surprise,” I said. “Don’t worry, I can assemble it all by myself. You won’t have to do a thing.”

“What is it?” he asked again.

“It’s an Easy Glider,” I answered excitedly. “It’s like a Nordic Track machine.” The red flush spreading up my husband’s neck was not a good sign.

“Are you kidding me?” he cried out. “Those things are huge! Why didn’t you ask me before you bought something like this? Where are we going to put it?”

“It folds up; I watched the woman on TV do it with one hand. And it has wheels so I can move it around to different rooms in the house.”

“Do you expect me to assemble this thing?” he asked, as I opened the box and parts spilled out onto the living room floor. “This is going to take me all day.”

“No! The TV commercial said it’s easy to assemble. I’m going to do it all by myself!”

“Fine,” he said, throwing his arms up in the air.

“Fine!” I answered, as I began systematically  lining up the parts into neat rows. I hoped that he would come back soon and see that I was overwhelmed and offer to help, but that didn’t happen.

At one point, my son poked his head into the room and laughed at the sight of me sitting in the middle of the living room floor, surrounded by all the unassembled parts. “God, mom, this is a mess. What were you thinking?”

After four hours, and a lot of grunting and sweating, I finally had it put together. “Do you guys want to see how this thing works?” I called out to anyone who had an interest in my whereabouts for the day.

Only my son showed up for the great unveiling.

“Wow! That thing is huge, mom! Where the heck are you going to put it?” he asked.

“It’s supposed to have wheels, so I can move it around the house, but they weren’t in the box. I’ll have to call them on Monday. That’s a minor detail,” I said. “For now, just watch this!”

With a big smile on my face, I hopped up on my new Easy Glider and began pumping my arms and legs like those beautiful people in the infomercial. But something was terribly wrong, because the thing started shaking and leaning from side to side like it was made of bendable rubber. It was nothing like the sturdy, perfectly synchronized machine I saw on TV.

“This thing is a piece of crap!” I shouted. My son made a quick about-face and ran out of the room. Some very colorful language accompanied my disassembly of the Easy Glider.

I spent the rest of the day repacking it as best I could. Of course, nothing goes back in the box exactly like it came out, and I went through an entire roll of heavy duty packing tape to hold in the bulges so they wouldn’t explode out the seams of the box.

My husband carried it out to the car, without saying a word, and returned it to the UPS store. We never spoke about the Easy Glider again.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Mother’s Day Cards

Posted on May 11, 2015 by Christine Vanderberg

Mother’s Day was a joy when the kids were in grammar school, and they came home with those hand drawn cards and homemade gifts. I wouldn’t trade those lopsided crafts of macaroni picture frames and Popsicle stick coffee coasters for all the diamonds in Tiffany’s. Really. No kidding.

But after grammar school, the boys were pretty much on their own, when it came to gift giving. They were at that awkward age: too young to have the means to go shopping on their own for a gift, and too old to paint Popsicle sticks.

Although I told them that love was the only gift I ever wanted on Mother’s Day, I couldn’t hide my disappointment when they gave me just what I wanted – and nothing else. That’s when my husband would lay the guilt on them, by gathering them together after breakfast and whispering, “Can’t you at least make your mother a card for Mother’s Day?” Then I would hear them scurrying around as they frantically searched for art supplies and paper to create a masterwork of art and poetry.

I have received many Mother’s Day cards in my lifetime. They have been endearing, sentimental and – interesting, to say the least. While cleaning out my dresser drawer the other night, I came across some that I have saved through the years. I would like to share parts of them with you now. I have blocked out the signatures to protect the innocent.

Here is an example of one of those Mother’s Day messages.  It was just a small piece of paper with no artwork.

Mothers day-1Mothers Day-2

Dear Mom,

I know you are worth more than any “executive” in the world. And you have your whole family to show it. Although this day may have been a flop I hope desert can make up for it. After all, desert is the “sweetest” part of a meal.     Love, —

OK, so what if dessert is spelled wrong.

Another year, the artwork was much improved, and the sentiment became so lofty – especially that description of me at the end.

Mothers day tree      Mothers Day great being

On Mother’s Day I’d like to give my appreciation to an order of great beings. Especially my particular Protector, and provider. Thanks for always being a typical but special mom.   Your loving son, —

One year I opened a beautiful store bought card and thought I would find a sentimental message inside.  After reading the first two sentences, I almost dropped the card for fear of what he was going to say.

FromYourSon

Dear Mutha!

OK. I’m going to spare you the usual mother’s day card shlop.  I’m going to tell you what I think you need to hear.…..It ended with…I love you very much and have a Happy Mothers Day.

Dear Mutha

And, finally, this note I found on my pillow late in the evening, at the end of another memorable Mother’s Day.  It started out:

Mothers Day Belated

Mom,

Happy Belated Mother’s Day!

I swear I didn’t forget, you just remembered in time to make me look bad.

All that practice making homemade cards has finally come to fruition with this beauty that my son made for me this year.

Mothers Day End

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 1 Comment