By Kathy Miele
My car was in the shop for an oil change and I’d been using my son Alex’s car for the day. What an adventure that turned out to be.
I couldn’t wait to get home to share my thoughts with him.
As I walked in the front door Alex was waiting for me. “I’m glad you’re back, I wanted to run out for a minute,” he said as he held out his hand for the car keys.
“How can you drive in that thing?” I asked as I handed him his keys.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s filthy!” I cried. “Not to mention a car accident waiting to happen.”
“Okay, I get the filthy part,” he admitted. “I haven’t gotten a chance to clean it out since I got home from college.”
“Clean it out since you got home? Exactly which year are you talking about, because there’s stuff in there from your freshman year?”
“Hey, I might need some of those things,” he countered.
“Really? Because now that you’ve graduated, I’m pretty sure you’re not going to need a book from freshman year or any of the other stuff that’s school-related.”
Alex smiled. “I have to admit, it is nice not having to think about going back in the fall,” he said. Then he looked concerned. “What did you mean when you said it was an accident waiting to happen?”
“I went to turn a corner and one of your half-filled bottles of water rolled under the gas pedal and, when I went to kick it out of the way, it rolled up under the brake so I was swerving all over the road while I tried to move it out of my way,” I said.
“Really?” Alex shrugged his shoulders. “That’s never happened to me. Maybe you took the corner too fast.”
“Seriously?” I couldn’t believe he was going to try and make his rolling garbage my fault but I decided to move on to his next car issue. “There’s also a weird smell coming from the backseat.”
Alex thought for a minute. “That could be a few things,” he said. “It might be my running sneakers.”
“Yuck!”
“Or it could be the leftover bag of Taco Bell that Max threw in the backseat after we went out for second dinner last week.”
“Oh, come on!” I cried. “I didn’t raise you to be such a slob!”
“No?” Alex smiled and patted me on the top of the head. “Weren’t you the one who used to follow me around and clean up after me?”
“When you were 4!” I countered. “Don’t you think you’re too old for me to be doing that now?”
“I don’t know,” he smiled as he headed out the door carrying another bottle of water for the ride. “Have you looked in my car lately?”
