Why Drive When You Can Walk?
Curating a Creative Life — Saturday Stories
Do you remember what it was like getting to drive yourself to school? Pretty cool, right? No having to wait for the bus or find a seat or deal with the cacophony of conversations all around you. Driving to school was a taste of freedom like nothing else, and it didn’t matter the car you drove.
I remember taking over the 1969 Chevy Nova my older brother had taken back and forth to school. When he moved on to a (slightly) newer used car, I took over the Nova. For those of you who may not know, a 1969 Nova was pretty much the equivalent of a ground tank for a 16 year old teenage girl. But I wasn’t put off by that, especially if it put me in charge of when I left for school and came home.
Because as it turned out, it wasn’t the tank-like size of the Nova that gave me the greatest challenge. It was the horn. Yes, you read that correctly — the Nova’s car horn created perhaps my most challenging and unpredictable moment; in fact it’s a moment we still talk about today, 38 years later.
As a high schooler, school started at 7:05, and with it being at least a 20 minute drive from my neighborhood to the school, I tended to head out no later than 6:30. Which is exactly what I did on this particular morning. I had no sooner backed out of the driveway and started down the street when the…
