four year old driver
/When I was four years old, my mom's good friend moved to Toledo. We went to visit them a few times. While mom and MJ visited, Nancy and I played in the station wagon. This was the station wagon Nancy and I thought was red. It was actualy black with a red interior. Nancy always played the mom and I always played the dad. It was fine with me, I got to drive. Back then, you could put a car in gear without the car being on. Without any keys. The car was parked in the driveway. The driveway was on a somewhat steep incline. The car began to move. Nancy jumped out of the back seat and cut her lip in the process. The car rolled down the drive way into the street. It rolled across the street into the embankment which formed the fork in the road. The car rolled up the embankment between a telephone pole and its guy wire. The car stopped.
Mom and MJ ran out of the house to see the car stopped and me outside the car holding onto the door. I had the car stopped and was keeping it from rolling. Yes, I was four years old. My mom yelled at me to let go. I did and the car began to roll down the embankment, across the street and into a front yard of someone's house. The car stopped.
My mom got to the car and went to shut the back door. It wouldn't budge. It had been bent backwards when the car rolled through the telephone pole and the guy wire. My mom got into the car and moved it off the lawn. I remember seeing her replace a patch a grass with her foot.
MJ protected me from my mom's wrath. My mom took the car to a service station to get the door fixed. They could only get the door partially closed. They tied it so it would not swing open. As my mom drove back to MJ's, school was getting out and kids were walking down the streets. They saw the car and would yell, "Hey Lady! Your back door is open!" This happened many times.
When she got back to the house, she had calmed down some. She approached me and I said, "If I had the car keys I could have driven it better."
We drove back to Michigan than night. All three of us had to sit in the front seat so mom wouldn't worry about one of us falling out of the car.
This is one of those stories the family loves to tell over and over. I am not sure if the memory is really mom or one from the story mom told over and over. I read recently that memories can be false. The only images I have in my head are playing in the car, mom putting back the grass, and riding in the front seat on the way home. It was dark.