Riding in Cars with Boys

My apologies, I have kinda been on the run the last couple of days. But I promised Jerry a post yesterday, and now Rob is hounding me so I figured I better get the one up.

First, let me start by stating that I agree with the new law that only allows teenager to have one passenger in their car. I am for as strict of policies as possible when it comes to teenage driving. This has nothing to do with being in my thirties now, I have been saying this since I was 20. I believe the drinking age should be lowered to 18 and the driving age should be raised to match it. I say this fully aware of the fact that I was no where near responsible enough to have a license at 16; pretty much everyone I know was in at least one accident before they turned 18, sometimes with me in the car, (Celeste).

Now that we have that cleared up it also makes me sad for today's teens that they won't know the fun of riding to away games with a carload of their friends, singing, yelling, rocking the car, and spotting Padidles. I have a lot of such stories, but one in particular came to mind when I was talking about this with Karen and Luciana.

It was the Spring of '92 and the St. John Baseball team was playing a game on a college field near Youngstown. Cady Wilcoxen offered to drive in her Ford Taurus and plenty of people took her up on it. In the front sat Cady, Jill Blanton, and Luciana. Packed into the backseat were John Buskirk, Lisa Ray, Jerry, and yours truly.

I believe there was some sort of configuration where Lisa was sitting on laps, Buzzy had the driver side window, I the other, and Jerry was riding the hump. Jerry has his arm around Buzzy with his hand out the window. As we rolled into town we crossed a very narrow bridge, barely wide enough for two cars. While we were on this bridge I hear a dull thud and observed Jerry retract his hand back to his lap like an an alligator snapped at it. I couldn't hold back the smirk that made its way across my face, I just looked at Jerry and said, "Did you just hit your hand on that car's side view mirror?" The answer was a very painful "Yes." I laugh every time I think about this incident.

Jerry did ruin my glee when we went to Burger King after and I had to reach in his pocket to get his money because his hand was too swollen to do it on his own.