The Wake-up Call: Risk and Reality

If we are lucky in life, we get wake-up calls, experiences which indicate that we have been playing with fire or ignoring signs, experiences which force us to stop and notice some parts of our lives which we have been trying to stuff under a rug and pretend are not there. I am afraid that I have gotten a few over the past month, the most recent being Friday night.

As I was driving on the freeway on my way to an anticipated weekend with my son, I got stuck in stop and go traffic, a common situation and one which always begs me to entertain myself with anything - anything! - but driving. My radio, my phone, my email all called out to me like sirens, and I, a master multi-tasker, was sure that, as always, I could beat all the statistics about multi-tasking while driving. Not so this time; the photo of my beloved car depicts the results of my distraction when I became yet another statistic and slammed into the stopped car in front of me on the freeway.

While embarrassed, shaken up and annoyed by the situation, it made me look long and hard at how much I indulge in the behavior of assuming "it can't happen to me". And this is my wake-up call - that it can and it did, that as much as I thought that somehow I was superior in some way that should make me be able to get away with dangerous behavior, I am not. And I need to stop.

I once dated a man who could - and did - text and drive, googling and looking up directions while driving, sometimes on two devices, and it both terrified me and thrilled me, thrilled me to watch someone else defy the odds and terrified me knowing that he was putting us both at risk, to say nothing of the risk he posed to other drivers on the road. I didn't ask or demand that he stop his behavior nor did I absent myself from it, and I realize now that while partially I was afraid of being seen as a wimp, I was also motivated by the thrill of the bravado of the risk and beating the odds. Macho behavior can be attractive and seductive; if it wasn't, we all would have stopped engaging in it or responding to it long ago.

My injured little car is proof that I am not somehow magically exempt from the risk. My bruised ego is proof that I was just fooling myself. I am grateful that this was only a wake-up call, and feel fortunate that I caused no greater harm. As I drove on the freeway today, I could feel those impulses calling out to me to glance off to my phone, to see if something important was happening outside my car. It was then I realized that learning to wait was something I badly needed a crash course in.

Midlife Crisis?

It is hard for me to believe that my beloved little midlife-crisis car is about to turn 10 years old, and even harder for me to believe that it is nearly 10 years since I started worrying about turning 50! When I got the Audi TT, my (male) boss at that time told me he thought the car was too young for me (or I, too old for it!) My kids wondered why I had gotten something that clearly was not meant to cart them and lots of friends around. My husband wondered what had come over me, and I felt rather guilty about indulging in something that was so much just for ME!

The TT was pretty symbolic for me. When I first laid eyes on it, the designer part of me felt that it was the embodiment of a product in which the designer got to design exactly what he/she wanted, without some panel of experts announcing what should or should not be done. It was clearly a fusion of love and design, looking so modern and like no other car around, yet referencing some of the great classics of earlier years. I fell hard for it, for all it represented and for all it was - fast, statement-making, adorable, and my choice.

I have to laugh about the comment about the car being "too young" for me. Not long ago, I went to a party at which two other women my age also had silver TT's - for all the same reasons I had. While I am sure that the designer or marketer never said "What can I design that will appeal to established, professional women over 50 who think of themselves as pioneers and individuals?", this is, in fact, what he or she has achieved. Rather than this turning out to be a car in which many women pretend we are younger, these little TT's seem to help us express a confidence in our older selves, a willingness to identify ourselves as fast, sexy, style-aware women.

My intention when I got the car was for it to be the last car I ever bought, for me to take care of it until it became a classic, for it to age gracefully beside me. We'll see if I carry through with that. As "Little Silver" is getting creakier, I find myself wondering if her days might be getting numbered. I may have to trade her in at some time, yet I'll never want to forget or replace the feelings I have associated with her: that I could turn 50 and keep moving ahead in my life; that I could surprise myself and others with an unlikely choice and be OK with that; and that I could choose something which was just for ME, and it didn't make me the meanest, most selfish woman/mother/wife in the world.