How I Discovered My Mum Could *Really* Drive
As a wee fella, maybe 8 or 9 years old at most, both I and my mum were studying classical guitar. I should say that this "mum and I" thing was already starting to get uncool. Anyway, she was driving us home after lessons one day when....maybe I should set the scene.

We lived in a very hilly suburb with lots of lovely twisty roads on which many years later I was to learn all about how not to ride a motorbike well (thus becoming eventually a good rider). We were a 2-car family at that time. There was a forest green Ford Cortina station wagon (an Australian horror story of a car) and also 'Charlie Brown,' the puce coloured Mini. Dulux call the duco colour 'Plum Loco.' It was most distinctive, being ostensibly an ordinary Leyland Mini with a black sunroof and this awfully loud colour but underneath the previous owner had 'done some work.' My dad was a deputy at a local high school and usually drove this car to work.

We were coming home in the Mini this day (and yes you can just get 2 guitar cases in the boot of a Mini), all is well with the world in the late afternoon sunshine, and suddenly a pair of teenage boys in a hotted-up Torana (look it up if you must) shot past dangerously around a blind bend, shouting out something to do with our surname, and in the split second they were level with us suddenly looked just a tad surprised and embarrassed at who was actually in the car.

"Little bastards" says she, slamming down into third and flooring the worked motor, headed straight for the tail of the offenders' car. To their credit, they attempted escape. Despite the Torana's superior power and their teenage lack of fear they were quite simply no match for the joyous rage and sheer skill of my mother's technique, hitting every apex perfectly and keeping the engine right in the sweet spot the whole time. I was, needless to say, just a tad white with fear. I had never seen this before. She's hardly angry at all it seems, now she's just having fun!

You see, it turns out that not very long before my mum had been diagnosed with cancer, and the jury was still out on a prognosis but it was not likely good. So in some sense I guess she was off the leash, as it were.

Anyway, in the end, the boy racers bottled it. As we neared the plateau that topped our suburb and some larger, straighter, busier roads, unable to shake us, they simply slowed right down and crept over to the left, heads meekly pulled in.

My mother pulled up alongside. I was afraid she was going to attempt a swear and ruin it all. Instead, she reached across me and gave them a steely-eyed finger. Yep, the wrong one. Here's my mum, the vanquisher of teeny boys at their own game, fucking it all up totally by oh-so-coolly showing them the might of her index fucking finger. And drove off smugly.

Oh, the shame.

Dad didn't let her teach me to drive.
(dadadali has hybrid vigour, Fri 12 Feb 2010, 13:20, Reply)