Zippy

Ain't she purdy!

Zippy is my car.  I do not believe in cars with no names.  They are like people with no souls.  It's weird.  A car with no name is incomplete, like a cake with no frosting.  Also, cars and trucks, are feminine.  You cannot name an automobile Frank, or Eugene.  It's just not right.  I say this despite having dubbed our old minivan 'Van Wilder'.  That name never did sit quite right with me.

Zippy is a salsa red 2014 Chevy Sonic.  She is named Zippy because she is the perfect car for me to zip around town in.  Driving her is a pleasure!  She has good giddy-up and go and she can fit into even the smallest of parking spaces.  Whereas my husband has to circle a parking lot 5 times to find a double space big enough to park his enormous Silverado, I can squeeze into even cramped spaces with room to spare.

I have yet to find anything that I cannot fit into my car.  The largest load she carried was two ninety six gallon rolling trash cans.  If my writing career doesn't take off, I know I'll have plenty of space if I need to live in my car!

Believe it or not, there was a time when I almost didn't choose Zippy.  I simply could not get over her one terrible flaw.  Yes!  She does have one.  I remember my husband and the dealer trying to talk me into Zippy, extolling all her amazing features, her terrific fuel economy, her back up camera, her safety features and especially her large video screen and high tech computer system.  Talk about barking up the wrong tree with that one!  Now, I'm a simple gal.  I don't need a lot of bells and whistles, but I just could not get past Zippy's most aggravating design flaw.  The cup holder is in an absolutely shit position.

Seriously??

I'm short.  Very short.  Like 5'1".  I have to pull the drivers seat forward all the way, just so I can reach the pedals.    In Zippy, the cup holders are in the back of the center console, not the front.  This means that when I am driving, the cup holder is behind me.  Right behind my right hip.  Just imagine trying to drive and having to contort your arm and elbow every time you want a sip of tea and then trying to return your cup to the cup holder by feel, because you don't want to take your eyes off the road for the sake of a sip of tea and accidentally crash the car and kill your whole family!  Chevy, if you're reading this, I noticed that the latest model of Sonic still has the cup holders in this crappy position!

I thought this issue was so annoying that I was totally gonna walk away from Zippy.  It wasn't until the salesman uttered the magic words that I changed my mind.  Two little words that I had been dying to hear since my very first car, an eleven year old, rickety 1987 Toyota Corolla I got 20 years ago.  "Heated seats".  SOLD!

I'm also not so hot on her licence plate number.  It starts with BVFR.  Yes  Beaver.  I'm driving a Beaver Mobile.  Terrific for my street cred.  It's just one step away from Quentin Tarantino's Pussy Wagon!

Even though I love my car and use it every single day, and I have given it a sweet little name, I must admit to a shameful secret.  Zippy has a much less pleasant nickname which unfortunately suits her almost as much as her Zippy moniker.  Her nickname is, The Mobile Garbage Can.  There is on average so much trash in my car I would be mortified to let anyone in.  It looks like Hoarders, Car Edition.  There are coats, sweaters, mitts, hats, socks and just about every other article of clothing my kids manage to strip off in transit.  There is junk mail that gets picked up at the mailbox but never brought into the house.  There are empty soda cans and bottles in every cup holder, door crevice and seat pocket and piled up on the floor, and there is enough fast food trash to fill one of those 96 gallon trash cans.  It is so embarrassing.  I probably have enough french fries in my floor mats to open my own McDonald's.  My change tray, (which in my opinion is located right where the cup holder should be), is overflowing with parking lot stubs and McDonald's Monopoly game stickers.

I got an Uber the other day.  The guys car was immaculate.  "You don't have kids, do you"? I asked.  "Nope" he said.  Yeah, no crushed up Cheerios in his seats.  I can't blame this on the kids though.  My car was a mess before they were ever born, but hey certainly don't help!

Here's the funny thing though.  I have set up Zippy to be the tidiest car ever!  I have a great over the seat storage thingy that's filled with little pockets to hold things up off the floor.  It's currently empty except for a little roll of garbage bags for my over the seat garbage can, which is currently overflowing with dirty tissues.  I had a nice, neat box of tissues for the kids to use in the car, but it is currently crushed and wet and mashed into the floor mat under the pop cans with the old french fries.  It has been replaced by a lovely roll of toilet paper that is smooshed into place in the passenger corner of the front dashboard.  Nice.  Nothing says sophisticated, modern woman like a roll of ass wipe in your front window.

I bought a lovely car air freshener from Bath and Body Works that plugs into my air vent and blows lovely smells into the cabin while we're driving.  I'm sure if we could smell it over the aroma of wet mittens and fast food remains, it would smell lovely.

I cleaned Zippy out yesterday.  She's all clean and tidy now, vacuumed and spiffy with a fresh air freshener to boot. I even dusted off my Spock and Captain Kirk bobble heads and replaced the toilet paper for a fresh box of tissues. 

I'd like to say that she will stay clean and tidy, but after 20 some years of vehicle ownership I have little hope of that being the truth.

If I had to think about what the contents of my car say about me it would be this; I have good intentions, I am a nerd, and in the grand scheme of life and all the things I care about and devote my time to, a clean car isn't something I'm gonna stress over.

So get out there before it gets too frigid and give your car a little love!

Let me know in the comments what's in your car?  Does it have a name?

Peace!

Michy

How do We Make Kids Remember??

Remembrance Day is this weekend, and as a mother of two almost teenage children, I have been contemplating on how to mark the occasion with them.  Schools in Canada do a wonderful job of marking Remembrance day for students.  In the weeks leading up to Nov 11, they do history lessons about the various wars, listen to stories from survivors and do art projects from dramas and paintings to poetry, and at every school I've ever been to, these works are presented to the entire school at a special Remembrance Day ceremony put together by the staff and students to pay tribute to our service men and women and honor their sacrifice.

Wow, when I type it all out like that it really seems like they really should get it, but they don't.  They know Remembrance Day is about honoring veterans for their sacrifice, but they don't get what that sacrifice was.  War and battle are such a foreign concept to them that it has become a thing of entertainment and fiction.  They respect the soldier, but they don't respect the war.

My children, like many others in North America think war is fun.  It's the subject of many of the most popular video games.  Games that although they are rated for adults, are often in the hands on children as young as 9.  Games where you get points for killing people, so the more people you kill the better.  Games where there is no repercussion for killing the wrong person, and in which if you get killed, you just jump back up in the next round and keep going.  You are omnipotent.  Everyone can die but you. They see avoiding being shot as merely a challenging exercise.  They see being shot in the movies and video games as a quick 'pop pop' and you're dead, where only the good guys know how to aim straight, and if you do get hit, some hot babe will come along and nurse you back to health.  They don't understand the pain, the horror of seeing your limbs blown off, or the long, painful road to recovery.  They certainly don't understand watching your friends die all around you.  I wonder how popular these video games would be, if after you paid your $120 and got killed, you stayed dead and that was the end.

I have always found sharing real stories to be a great way to help my kids gain an appreciation for the struggles of others.   A few years ago I thought I had landed upon the perfect tool to help open their eyes to the realities of war.  I had picked up a book written by a former child soldier from Seirra Leone.  A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah.

I thought, I'll read this book to the boys and they will finally understand that war is not a game.  I decided to give the book a quick read myself before starting it with they boys.  They were 10 and 8 at the time.  Turns out, the reality of what Ishmael endured was so horrific, I felt the boys were too young to hear it.  Perhaps now that they are older.

My son, age eleven, attended a birthday party this past weekend.  It was a sleepover with a bunch of his friends.  I'm sure pizza, cake and candy were included in the celebration, but the main event of this party was a trip to a paintball arena.  My older son had gone to a party like this once before and, as with that time, I was deeply conflicted. I wonder what children in Sierra Leone would think if they new what our children did for fun.

So how do we help kids remember the sacrifice of men and women from whom they are so far removed? Edu-ma-cation y'all.  Talk to them about it.  In the car, at the table.  When you hear a story on the radio or the news, share it with them.  Explain to them that they get to go to school and play hockey and go to their church or synagogue or mosque, and sleep without worrying about a bomb falling on their house, because a long time ago, when someone wanted to take that freedom away from them, brave men and women fought and died to make sure that that didn't happen.  Say a quick prayer with them before bed every night and mention the kids, just like them, who are living in fear around the world.  It helps remind them of their own good fortune and helps them to learn some empathy.

So, here are my plans for this Saturday, November 11.  Will will miss his dance class, which is scheduled right during the 11 o'clock period.  Instead, he and the rest of our family will be standing, shivering in the cold at the local cenotaph.  Then we'll come home and keep my husbands tradition of watching Saving Private Ryan or some other movie that accurately depicts the realities of war.

Not so much                      Absolutely

I am thrilled that my children and myself have never had direct experience with war.  I pray every night that we never do.  In today's political climate I do a lot of praying.  If Trump and Un decided to have a go at each other our lives could go sideways in a second.  If war breaks out in the next 5-10 years it will be my sons leading the charge to preserve our freedom, a thought I can barley process.

So, a big thank you to all our veterans and service men and women!  You are kick ass! Thank you for facing down the fire so that I can raise my children in a place of peace.

Let me know in the comments if you have a recommendation for a good Nov. 11th movie!  

Michy