DUOFILIA

I love cars. I love driving. I love speed. I love bright shiny fast things. Now that I’m a responsible adult woman with a family, I’ve tempered these urges. Mostly.

Last October I flew down to Phoenix for a business conference. I go to Phoenix nearly every year and while I couldn’t take the heat or the lack of green, I’ve discovered that the desert is a fantastic driving environment.

At the car rental, the attendant led me through the garage. Phoenix has an indoor car rental complex, only a few years old, and you can rent everything there from a Ford Focus to a Ferrari. I had reserved a mature mid-size sedan, but on the way to the sedan we past a long line of shiny Chargers, all lined up and juicy. The attendant saw my salivation and told me I could upgrade.

Well, duh. I would upgrade to an Aston Martin if I could but there’s this little issue. It doesn’t pass my cost/benefit analysis. But, being the good salesman, he told me he could give me a great deal on a Charger. I sighed and said no, and he gave me an even better deal. I gleefully took it and picked the biggest baddest car I could find, a dark cherry Charger with a Hemi.

He gave me the keys and I wanted to hug him. But after I hugged the car. I powered it up and when I heard the purring rumble of the engine, I was nearly tearful. You have to understand that I have actually gotten tears in my eyes when an Air Force fighter jet roars low overhead and I can feel the vibration in my chest. Oh, to fly a fighter jet! The thought makes me want to cry.

I enormously enjoyed the drive to the hotel, on the outskirts of Scottsdale. But it was at the end of rush hour and I wasn’t able to let it out fully. The next day I spent in lectures and networking, thinking all the while of the muscle in the parking lot. After spending what I felt was the minimally adequate time at the evening’s social hour, I went to my room and changed into my jeans and then rushed to the car.

I pulled out onto the highway, facing north, away from the city and into the desert. The sun was near setting and the hills were truly purple and the saguaro cacti laid long shadows. I felt the rumble of the engine, it was eager to sprint, but I bided my time until the traffic grew sparser and came to long straits, just before the hills.

I crested a low hill and before me lay about a mile of straightaway. I pressed the pedal and the car eagerly charged forward, fast, faster, faster. The G’s stuck me to the seat back and a big grin on my face. The mile took seconds and was over too fast. I repeated this a few more times before the highway began twisting through the hills. How fast? I’ll tell you sometime. In the meantime I’ll just say that previously the fastest I’ve driven was in the desert of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, about 17 years ago. I broke that record.

I passed a police vehicle in the hills, but he was on the other side of the highway, albeit next to a turnaround, but he was also in a big older model SUV and we both knew that to chase me would have been an exercise in futility. I did watch more cautiously after that, since he certainly had friends to radio.

I got to Payson, Arizona and stopped at a store to pick up a few things. When I came out I saw my big bright shiny red Charger gleaming in the lamplight. There were a few guys around, getting out of or loading their cars. I strutted to my car and flicked the button on the car fob, knowing that the doors would unlock and the lights would flash and everyone would know that’s my car.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t the unlock that I hit, it was the panic alarm. With a moment, everyone knew that was my car. The horn wailed and the lights flashed and it wouldn’t stop and I kept hitting the panic button, ANY button to make it stop, please stop! I finally realized that I had to hold down the panic button and noise and light show ceased, although the standing and staring from all corners of the parking lot remained for long moments after.

I tried to enter the car as invisibly as I could and slunk out of the parking lot as imperceptibly as one could in a big bright shiny rumbling red Charger.

The moral of the story, at least for me, is that the good Lord loves me and makes sure that I remain humble. Despite my love of bright shiny fast things.

Ok, so I’m not going to just start blogging again for the first time in eight months and not mention the reason why I took the time off. I just am not going to do it today. All I want to do today is write.

I currently have a stomach bug and I was laying in bed at 0300, with some radical heartburn, like I’ve never had in my life, and I wrote this blog entry in my head. So after an eight months absence I come back with a title of “Head Sandwich.” What can I say.

All of us possess genes we recieved from our parents. Brown hair, short, predisposed to back pain and sci fi. My parents, actually my father specifically, gave my sister Mia and I two bizarre genes: the dominant must-sleep-with-fan gene and the more wily head-sandwich gene.

The first gene was expressed early on. My sister and I slept in the same room growing up and for as long as I can remember we had a fan on at night. We didn’t have air conditioning, so that was a factor, but we ran it 365. It’s the white noise we require, although the air movement is a plus. Since childhood I’ve personally kept the fan industry in business in the Great Northwest. Well, me plus Mia and Dad.

I’ve passed this gene on to my daughters, who at six also sleep with a fan. Turn a fan on any time of day and we feel strangely sleepy. Must nap. We’re Pavlov’s people.

The second gene remained unexpressed for at about 32 years. As a child I recall tiptoeing through my parents room where Dad was napping. The fan was on high and you couldn’t actually see any of him, except occasionally his chin and nostrils. The covers were pulled up high, no matter what time of year, and his head was sandwiched between two pillows. My sister slept the exact same way. I never knew this was unusual until a friend of mine once saw Dad napping and had an incredulous look on her face.

I grew up, went to college, got a job, got married. And never once did I have the urge to put a pillow on my head. Then I became pregnant with my twins. I remember laying in bed, wide awake despite the fan and thinking, “it sure would be nice to have a pillow on top of my head.”

Ack! No! It cannot be! I refused to allow the expression of the head-sandwich gene. Head sandwich behavior was for nerds. Ok, I’m a geek and I have some nerdy qualities, but if I went the head sandwich route who knows what would pop up next! I’d probably start arranging rug fringe, taping my glasses, and pulling my pants high over my umbilicus.

Months went by and every time I lay down I felt the urge. It was incredibly powerful. Put pillow on head, put pillow on head, put pillow on head. By the last couple months of pregnancy I was already using five pillows: one under my head, one under the giant belly, one tucked in my back, one between my knees and one at my feet. One more pillow and I would appear as a moderately-sized cumulus. I refused.

After the twins were born our lives changed forever and the first year was just a struggle to remain sane and awake. The didn’t sleep through the night until about eight months. I pumped breastmilk for a year, which is actually a type of torture in some countries. Sometime within that year I gave in. I had the rare opportunity to take a nap during the day and as I lay down I felt the now-familiar urge to put pillow on head. I grabbed an extra pillow. And I put it on my head.

Ohhh! The glory of it! The soothing pleasantness! Sounds were muffled, all I could hear was the fan. Light was shut out. My head was warm. All you could see of me was my nostrils. As the gene became fully expressed I fell into grateful oblivion.

I’ve slept with a pillow over my head ever since.

Don’t tell anyone.