“Is that your car, there?”
“Yeeaahh…”
“Oh, I always wondered who drove that thing. It sounds like a tank going up the street.”
This latest comment from a neighbor about my vehicle’s extraordinary auditory output has convinced me that it is, indeed, time to Mommify the Mommymobile.
Yes, that would be me -- The suburban, toddler-toting, NPR-listening mama, driving the souped-up SUV. How did this extra-loud Durango with the blinged-rims come to be mine, you ask? Well, it’s simple. I hate car-shopping and am not that interested in cars even when they come home. So, when it was time for us to replace my mommymobile, I told my husband to go out and buy a new car. Being a bit of a car-lover, he went out and did just that.
After much research, he finally, he found exactly what we were looking for. It had everything on his checklist (it’s a long list and I’m not sure I ever fully understood what all was on it) and everything on my checklist (1- must easily accommodate a double-stroller, 2- must be cheaper than our last vehicle).
“Are you sure you don’t want to test-drive it honey? Or at least see it before we buy it?” He asked me. No, no I did not. He warned me that the previous owners had done something to the exhaust so it was a bit loud and the rims were a bit “blingy,” so was I sure I didn’t want to at least look at it first? No, thank you.
When asked to describe the previous owners, he told me the woman was in her 40’s and looked like a blonde Posh Spice. They live in a nice, upscale neighborhood, so I thought – how loud can it be? An upper-middle class suburban woman isn’t going to be driving around anything too loud, right? Wrong.
Now I am the suburban woman driving around a really loud car. I’m told that every kid on our block knows when I’m coming home, long before my car comes into view. They hear me roaring (slowly) down our quiet, street and say “Dana’s home!” On the plus side, this is a bit of a safety feature, given that the kids on our block play in the street a lot.
My husband told me I’d get used to the noise, and about six months later, I largely have. As long as I don’t attempt to have conversations while on the freeway or when going uphill (did I mention we live on a mountain?), it’s really not so bad. I do worry a bit about waking the kids up from their naps if I ever leave during naptime, but that’s pretty rare.
However, this latest comment is making me think that it actually is time to undo whatever was done to that darn exhaust in the first place. Given that my husband likes the sound and I dislike spending time and money at a mechanic’s almost as much as I dislike car-shopping, it could be awhile before anything happens to “mommify” my mommymobile though…
