Horse Balls!

        Driving home at night when I was little meant being in the backseat with my brothers while Mom and Dad were up front. I mostly recall sitting in the window seat directly behind Dad. Sometimes my fingers made drawings in the condensation on the window – until Dad saw what I was doing and told me to stop. Something reminded me of that the other day and I suddenly wondered why a clean car window is more preferable to a child's doodles? When I couldn't draw on the window, I watched the moon as we turned corners – it was still right there just like in the childrens story Owl and the Moon – a true friend who stayed with us all the way home!

         If it was just Mom and me going somewhere, I got to sit in the front seat. And yes, in those days before mandatory seat-belts, Mom would thrust her arm across me if we were coming to a stop faster than usual. Every single time she did that, I felt the love. Of course I have inherited the gesture and have saved my purse from flying under the dash on many an occasion.

          I never understood the brights when I was little. I remember Mom would drive home from her parents' place back when they lived on Dash Street in South Buffalo – most of the ride was on Abbott Road which was very dark at night. Mom would touch something with her foot near the pedals and the brights came on – if she saw another car, she quickly motioned for the brights to go off. My imagination obviously thought Mom was doing something illegal – using the brights when no one else could catch her and turning them off so no one else would notice! And it made me wonder why there was such a feature in a car if it was illegal to use it! I guess that my brain had not been trained yet to consider what alternative, legal, explanations there might be – a lively imagination is one thing, but exercising the benefit of the doubt is also a valuable tool.

          Mom did not cuss when we kids were growing up. Driving a car, however, did take her to the brink. Mom never expressed road rage or anything close to it. Although now a memory has just jumped into my head about the time Mom had to go to downtown Buffalo, maybe for jury duty or maybe something she was delivering for her boss at County Hall – anyway, driving to downtown Buffalo was something very unusual for Mom to have been doing. And the person at the parking ramp was rude to her! I remember Mom coming home telling us about it and being more than irritated at the incident. She wrote a Letter to the Editor at the Buffalo Evening News detailing the encounter with the parking attendant. A few days later, the News called Mom and thanked her very much for the letter. They said the letter had concerned them so much that they contacted whoever was in charge of the parking lot and the News said that the matter had been taken care of. Would the action that resulted from her letter be enough? Mom said yes indeed.

          Back before regular folks could make viral videos of other people's rude behavior, they could still change the world with the pen being mightier than the sword.

But every once in a while, and I mean every once in a long while, some driver would irritate Mom to the extent that she would right then and there grab tightly onto the steering wheel and utter, “horse balls!”

          My head would turn in her direction in total shock! She would act like nothing happened. And it was never talked about.

          After we kids grew up, I think they were waiting first to hear it from us, but Mom and Dad eventually grew more comfortable cussing in front of us. I didn't hear it from Dad really – but my brothers might have a different recollection. Mom was much more frequent – especially in her later years. One Christmas Day when Mike and I were picking Mom up to take her somewhere, she got in the car and uttered the s-word trying to get the seat belt buckled. I said, “really Mom? It's Christmas; my ears have made it all the way to 2PM without hearing a cuss word, and the minute my own mother gets in the car she's using the s-word?” She couldn't have cared less and said, “it's my favorite word.”

           Many people disagree with me about this – I guess everyone disagrees with me about this, but I prefer the cuss-fee world of my youth – with just the occasional, because after all, the world is full of it, just the occasional, horse balls!

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