The Shallow End

Your Dream Car?

Rachel has posted our dream cars (if you're a commenter over at her place go check it out). And if you're not but still want to know what your dream car is, you'll have to ask her, because I couldn't find a magic link for this scientific study.

This reminds me of a cute "From the Mouths of Babes" story. Rachel absolutely nailed the car of my youthful dreams. One of my parents' friends drove one of those 12-cylinder Jaguars that looks like...well, the front end is very long and it's the definitive British sports car and I thought it was very cool. I've outgrown my affinity for anything that is overtly showy. Ask my family and they will tell you that I am the ultimate bore when it comes to "bling."

So once upon a time, we pulled into our local historic downtown square to go to our favorite ice cream parlor. We had to navigate our way through a Corvette car show to get to the ice cream. As we were trying to find parking, I let out a comment that would come back to bite me (as comments made in the company of children are wont to do). "Look at all these Corvettes. I don't like Corvettes very much. They're so phallic," said I, the wise one. Not surprisingly, the next question was "what does phallic mean?" "Um, well, it's like a man's private part; you see how the shape of the front of the Corvettes looks like that? Men who drive Corvettes are just showing off," I said, without any evidence whatsoever to back up this claim (and to any of my readers who happen to drive a Corvette, I apologize, but really, what are you thinking?!) And there was silence in the back seat of the car for a minute. We parked the car and started walking through the street full of cars. The cars and their owners were in full preening mode, feathers up. We were bumping shoulders with their owners when the youngest daughter (the one with the very loud made-for-theatre voice) asked, "WHAT WAS THAT WORD AGAIN? WAS IT PHALLIC OR PHALLIS?"

Groan. Another lesson learned on the front lines of parenting. 8-}

Labels: Parenting, The Absurd

posted by Gwynne @ 9:35 PM