Me and The Minivan

I love minivans, and I actually have a lot of experience with them.  I learned to drive by driving a minivan, and then I drove that van in high school.  While many (snotty) kids might complain about driving a minivan in high school, I was just so thankful that I had a functional car to drive!  (My older siblings drove a car that literally didn't go in reverse when they were in high school.....haha!  So yeah, I considered myself very lucky).  The minivan looked a little something like this:

(not the actual van I drove)

I have many memories involving this van..... most are good, but I do have a couple not-so-good (and embarrassing!) memories I thought I'd share with the blogging world:

Story #1:

I can't remember if I just had a learners permit at this point in time or if I'd just barely gotten my license, but it was definitely very early on in my driving life.  Anyway, 99.9% of the time, the van was parked in our driveway.  Because of this, I learned to begin each driving session by getting into the van, turning it on, putting it into reverse, and backing out into the street.  I did this day after day until it was second nature.  Well, one day the van was parked on the street in front of our house- in front of another car.  Driving the van away would require nothing more than putting the car into Drive and driving off.  Simple, right?  I got into the van, turned it on, went into autopilot, and put the car into reverse since that was what I was used to. The second I realized what I had done, and that there was a car RIGHT behind me, I kinda flipped out and went to slam on the brakes.  Instead I slammed the gas.  Oops.  You can imagine how that went.  My dad was sitting in the passenger seat and I have no idea how he resisted kicking me in the face.  If it were my kid that had done something that stupid, I probably would have.  Thanks Dad!  Luckily for me, the car behind us wasn't exactly a BMW.  Still.  Not ideal.

Story #2:

At the ripe age of almost 17, I was now a very experienced driver.  ;-)  I was driving myself and my little brother from seminary to school, and was looking for a parking spot on the street.  (We had to pay to park in the school parking lot, (ridiculous!) so I resolved to park on the street near the school).  Well, I was pulling into the curb, in front of another car, and turned way, way too sharply.  I actually hit the parked car!!!!  As I hit it, my little brother started yelling (screaming?) at me, "YOU'RE HITTING THE CAR YOU'RE HITTING THE CAR YOU'RE HITTING THE CAR!!!!!!"  sending me into panic mode.... so naturally I started yelling back at him to shush it so I could concentrate and figure out how to dislodge my van from the other car.  After a minute of lots of yelling, I broke free, found another spot, and slowly got out of the van to assess the damage.  A couple boys from my ward who had witnessed the whole thing (embarrassing!) were already over at the other car, inspecting it.  Would you believe that while my van had a big scrape all down the side of it, the other car had not ONE speck of damage?  Yeah, I wouldn't believe it either, but it was true.  The boys from my ward informed me that I was the luckiest person ever and I agreed.... though I still had to call my parents and let them know about the damage to our car.  Calls like that are never fun, and I suppose I could have handled it more maturely.  "Hey Mom?  Don't get mad......"  I also assumed that since I hadn't totaled the van, the damage wasn't bad at all, so I think I told her that the scrape was "hardly anything."  Well, when my mom saw it for herself she informed me that the scrape was much bigger than "hardly anything," but she resisted ripping my head off.  Thanks Mom!

Even after hearing these stories, that husband of mine still thought it was time to buy a minivan for our family. In all fairness, I did eventually learn to stop pulling really stupid stunts with the van, (yay for an accident-free senior year!)  ;-)  and also got another 7 or 8 years of driving experience under my belt.  (Though not with a van).  So yes, as of last week, I am an official van-owning soccer mom!  And I love it!  Here's to making lots of new, wonderful, memories with our new (used) van, and to (hopefully) none of those memories involving me being an airhead!