Little Red Corvette

I wasn’t actually driving a little red corvette; it was a silver BMW. But Prince’s song was going through my head as I found myself shushing through the curves along the back roads to Vermont just a little too fast. I was taking a friend of mine to the hospital for day surgery, and, knowing how much I enjoyed a good car, she’d volunteered hers for the drive. Since it’s been a few decades since I’ve had a manual shift car, I was happy to have it all come back to me so quickly.

My love affair with performance cars began back in my early 20s, back when I was commuting several hundred miles a week driving between my three offices. At that time, I had a tricked-out Toyota Celica. It was me and that car and the open road. I could downshift through a curve like nobody’s business. Smooth as silk. I’d work through rush hour traffic so that by the time I hit the road, I could sail home. A three-hour drive for me was nothing. I had quite an adventurous life before marriage and kids. (The adventure continues in a different way now.)

There was only one problem resulting from the trip. Not my friend’s surgery; that went very well, and we were safely back home by early evening. The problem? For the next two days, every time I started and stopped my automatic-shift car, I nearly put myself through the windshield, as I slammed on the brakes looking for the clutch. Back to the mom-mobile and reality…