her able hands

I’m enjoying (defiantly, in spite of the chilly rain, and in spite of my recent insomnia) an afternoon glass of thick iced coffee, sweetened with organic cane sugar, and enough half and half to make it creamy but dark. I’m hoping it will remind the universe that it’s supposed to be sunny and warm out there, instead of all this endless rain, endless rain. And more rain. And oh, look! Here comes another band of rain!

We haven’t got it nearly as bad as New England, but it’s grey, breezy, and the fifth day of a steady drizzle interspersed with heavy rain (but not torrential.) The weather coupled with my moon time (oh, perimenopause, how I am not quite ready for thee!) has turned me into a zombie. Thus the afternoon coffee. Mmmm coffee. Thank Maude for coffee.

Hey! I wanted to tell you about the Punch Buggy! Tyler and I have had a vicious game of Punch Buggy going on between us for about six years now. It’s funny how some days I’m totally ON and I don’t miss a beat. I’m the one driving, so I’m already mostly alert, and I can see the ones in front of us as well as behind. My favorite is the black buggy because it rhymes, “Punch buggy black, can’t do nothin’ back!” We have to say the “can’t do nothing’ back” part, or the other person can deliver a rebuttal punch. Sometimes we both see the car at the same time, and then we rush to be the first one to get all the words out.

“Punchbuggyblackcan’tdonothin’back! I win!”

“No! I got it!”

“NO you didn’t! I did it.”

“Fine! It’s a tie!”

“Fine! So we punch each other, right!?”

“NO! We let it go, we cancelled each other out.”

“Chicken.”

“Yeah, whatever. My arm hurts already.”

No punching allowed until the magic words are spoken and the winner established. Solid punch to the upper arm, preferably in the exact same spot the last one was delivered.

Other days, I’m all lost in my head thinking about how many feet of beans to plant, and how many loads of laundry it will take to get to the center of my Tootsie Pop, and what the hell I can make for dinner that won’t bore me to tears because I’ve made it twice a week for the past six months, and enough already, I thought I was supposed to be good in the kitchen or something, and I hope Chris isn’t packing his bags to leave my libidoless ass. On those days Tyler notices fifteen VWs in as many minutes, and I’m a sobbing bruise of a woman trying to focus on the road, and seething in annoyance because I’m losing and I hate to lose just about as much as I hate to be wrong.

We aren’t allowed to use the yellow VW that’s always parked in front of that cute brick and yellow house on Horning Rd., or the rusty old style yellow one on the way to Cheril’s, and we just added in the yellow one that’s usually in the parking lot at the university stadium. Wonder what it is with the yellow?

We’re back in a pain delivery phase right now, meaning we hit and we hit hard. For a while we decided (probably because I whined that my bones are too close to the surface of my skin and I can’t be walking around looking like a victim of domestic abuse all the time,) that we’d just bank the points. That system got too unruly once we got up over 100, and we both lost track of how many we had. Sometimes we just went ahead and used the punch in the moment, and threw in one or two more from the bank, but could only do that if we had just called one. No random punches for banked buggies allowed.

Also we both cheated like crazy, throwing in an extra ten or twenty when we called out our current score. It reminded me too much of being a kid playing the game of Life with my sister, and how I always played banker and dealt myself a few extra $100,000 bills while she was busy trying to decide if she wanted that second baby boy or not. Apparently, a part of me still lives in that adolescent space of needing to be on top at any cost, so in an effort to grow up just a little, I surrendered to the punches again.

I want old style buggies to be a double punch, but Tyler won’t agree to that. But I keep arguing my point, because since they brought the Beetle back, they’re a dime a dozen. Around here every stripey-haired, fake-tanned co-ed drives one.

We’ve also learned that we have to keep the game between the two of us, as Kate taught us that normal people don’t appreciate a fist flying at them from across the car while careening 70 miles an hour down the highway. They fail to see the humor, or the fun. For most people getting punched like that is a big case of, “What the ever loving fuck people…”

But Tyler and I are passionate about our Punch Buggy. I’m not sure why he is, (yes I am, it’s because he gets to beat the crap out of his mother without consequence,) but for me it’s a psychologically twisted way for me to triumph over certain men in my past and their inconvenient attraction to the VW Beetle.

My dad bought one (black, not sure what year, or when exactly he bought it) and he put a CB radio in it, took on the handle of Moon Shadow, and retreated further into his own little private world where there wasn’t any room for the rest of his family. Breaker-breaker. A floor panel fell out of that car while he was driving down Route 24 one day. Oh, the signs! The hindsight! The hidden meaning!

My ex decided he had to have this ridiculous primer grey, partially rusted out Beetle and he emptied the giant water bottle change jar to the tune of $956 to pay for it. What an assload of change. It was a standard (which he couldn’t drive very well) and it smelled exactly like the one my dad had, so naturally, I never welcomed the car into my world. It was doomed from the start.

That car eventually became a home to a family of squirrels (because it wasn’t road worthy, and its decline accelerated with neglect and age and probably the bad juju I sent it by swearing every time I looked out the window and saw the squirrels pulling more nesting materials up into it from underneath, and the bad associations I had made with it from the very start, and the worrisome thoughts that I may have created an unhealthy Daddy relationship.) But that’s a whole other story.

Finally, I called one of those guys who comes to your house and gives you $50 and a tax write-off receipt for whatever hunk of crap they’re hauling away for you. I doubt I’ll ever be forgiven for that. But action had to be taken!

My favorite part of our Punch Buggy game? The moments when one of us has noticed a VW Bug turning onto the road where we’re waiting at a stoplight, and the person driving the bug sees one of us sock it to the other and we get to see them cracking up in recognition of the power they wield over idiots like us. I wonder what past they’re triumphing over?

*VW image copyright Harrogate Classics

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