Sometimes I forget how much things have changed during my lifetime.  Wednesday, while I was visiting my granddaughter and her family in Richmond, we passed a small two-seater sports car.  I’ve wanted one for most of my life.  It just wasn’t practical when my own children were growing up and I couldn’t really afford one later.  I voiced our standing joke, “He stole my car.”  My daughter and granddaughter said I have too many great grandchildren to buy one now.  As we discussed it, I realized my longing has been compromised.   

My thirty year love affair with convertibles has been contaminated by maturity.  The only way I would own one now would be if it had a roll bar.  I’m not sure when the possibility of a rollover began to outweigh the wind in my hair.  It must have been a gradual thing because I don’t even remember when it started.  Perhaps its a side effect of too many movie crashes or maybe it is part of my recently acquired inability to feel secure in a moving vehicle without a seat belt.  Now, I find myself reaching for one when I sit down in a theater.

I know where that one comes from.  In 1996, I was driving to work one rainy morning.  As I approached the section of road where the parkway becomes a surface street the car hydroplaned.  Luckily there was still a concrete divider between the lanes, at that point, that kept me from sliding into oncoming traffic.  However, that same barrier created a feeling of panic when the left front wheel began to climb it.  I was desperately trying to steer the car back toward the edge of the road so, as soon as the wheel gained traction on the vertical surface, it turned and sent me back across two lanes to jump the guardrail and wind up on the grassy bank beside the highway.  The vehicle landed right side up, but for an eternal moment, I had thought it was going to roll.   It was months before I could drive or even ride in the left lane without flinching. ( Read more )