Worked until 2:30, made it home by 3 at which time #3 (who was looking a little wild around the eyes from being cooped up all day) grabbed my cell phone, gave me a hug and ran out the door to find friends to hang out with.
#2 got home from school at about the same time, and after finishing up the chores I gave him, he has disappeared with a book to unknown locations within the house.
I was wading through memories earlier today, dwelling on some of my more favorite times from my youth. The memory that kept coming back to visit me was from shortly after getting my drivers license.
There were no seatbelt laws; there were no restrictions on who could be in the car with the new licensed driver. I took full advantage of the lack of these laws.
I was in Drum Corps (as I’ve mentioned before), and we had rehearsals nightly and on the weekends. I was just about the only one of my friends who had a license. Can anyone see where this might be going?
During my teen years, I drove a 70’s era Volkswagen 412, which was designed to seat 5 adults. I discovered I could exceed that by quite a few when seating kids rather than adults. It can be seen in the top left of this picture:
[album 23857 1981Page02.jpg thumblink]
My 16 year old mind took the following rational for exceeding this limit; the car was a bright yellow. The same color, in fact, as a school bus. If it was the same color of a school bus, it must be intended to hold a lot of kids, right? So, with people sitting on others laps, and the younger kids curled up back in the wagon area, I was able to fit twelve (yes, 12) kids between the ages of 10 and 16 into my trusty Volkswagen.
I should put a disclaimer here, I’m not sure my folks knew I was doing this and I’m fairly sure that had they known it would have been stopped rather quickly. Oh, they knew I was driving a few friends to rehearsal, but they did not know that I was driving 11 friends. As I pointed out earlier though, nothing of what I did was illegal in 1980. At least, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t…. Also, I only crammed that many people into the car when going to and from rehearsal. The rest of the time it was only 2 or 3 of us.
I went everywhere in my VW between getting my license and my folks selling the car about two years later. I went up to the foothills of the Cascades along the Columbia gorge to go hiking, I roamed about the Portland/Vancouver area in search of good music and good movies, and I made the occasional short-distance road trip (usually within 50 miles of home) to escape reality with a friend or two.
Those are some of my favorite memories. While I’m glad there are now laws that will keep my children more safe when they drive, I’m sad that they will miss that experience. On the other hand, knowing my boys, maybe it’s a good thing that those laws are in place!
Incidently, the dark haired boy in the bottom left picture is my Hubby, the blonde haired boy with his back to the camera was my boyfriend at the time.