van vs. naomi

Betsy and I used to laugh that Rebekah is competent and I am confident. Confident and charge ahead. It usually serves me well. And even when I fail, that indomitable buoyancy always pops right back up, and I hear myself talking just as big as last time. There was one time, though, when it failed me: learning to drive. It took several timid, faint-hearted years before I got my feet…..er, wheels… under me. But that’s the past. The almost forgotten past. Now I zip along with all the natural pluck my license allows. At least in small cars. Because a daunting nervousness still settles in the pit of my stomach when I take on a fifteen passenger van. As a driver. With a full load of students. All the sudden I’m green, raw, young.

This morning a handful of students slept in, as sane, ordinary persons do on Saturday mornings. But the rest of us headed to the annual rummage sale at the community center. We had to be early because class started at nine. So when or alarms sounded, we rolled out of bed and stumbled into the kitchen for coffee and cheerios. Suzanne handed Amanda and I each a set of keys, and we loaded into vans 1 and 2.

We careened gently down the hillside and through the gate.

“This really isn’t so bad, Naomi. You should just stop dreading driving these monsters and just be okay with it.” That’s what I said to myself. Half way down Blue Creek Road, however, Emily said something very different.

“Uh, Naomi, your gas tank is on empty.”

“Huh?” I glanced down. Sure enough. We were in the red. But I figured we had enough to make it into town. No low-gas light was on. Not even the smallest beep.

Ha.

I’ll keep the story short. Suffice to say we didn’t make it to the rummage sale. Eric, bless his soul, came to our rescue. The wise students were still breakfasting when we pulled back home. We settled on an alibi: We’d just say the rummage sale had consisted fully of such uninteresting articles as doilies, tablecloths and large furniture. Bless Suzanne’s soul, too: she assured me the sale wasn’t nearly as interesting as it was last year.

I dropped the students off at the lodge, drove down to the gas tank and filled up van #2 (which I mentally renamed “Van of No Mercy”), and went to brew a pot of coffee.

So I guess the white van won the first round. But there's still eleven weeks to go....