I
hate getting
shorter. Can’t do a thing about it. Maybe it’s not true; maybe they’re just making
things larger, like cars.
Ages ago, car designers came up with a great
idea: safety belts. It may save your life, we were told. Sure, when you’re 30,
but what about when you start to shrink and the belt that’s supposed to save your
life now cuts into the side of your neck. I tell people it’s a hickey, but suspect
they don’t believe me, since no respectable hickey ever looked like the slash
marks left on my neck by my car.
And speaking of inconsiderate things
car designers do for seniors, how about the rear view mirror that you can change
so the car lights behind you at night don’t blind you with their brilliance, but
instead are muted. That’s for safety, too, right? Then how come they don’t use
the same changeable glass in the side view mirrors? It’s irksome to have to feel
around in the dark for your sunglasses at night just because these car guys have
no imagination. Far as I know, this country hasn’t farmed out our American know-how.
This may be why Horace Greeley came up with the saying, “Common sense is very
uncommon.”
These auto bozos have simply gone too far in the wrong direction,
what with the 230-mile per gallon car they’re talking about now, the Chevy Volt.
Whoever heard of a gallon of electricity? Besides, you’d have to have a pretty
long extension cord to go that distance. I had a Chevy once and my boyfriend went
nearly all the way without any electricity at all. Ah, those were the days, the
days of real hickeys. But I digress.
The guy at the car showroom told
me the thing most women are interested in is the size of the cup holder. He looked
confused when I reminded him that it’s really the men who are interested in cup
sizes. You know what I mean, don’t you, ladies?
Those
car people should smarten up and cater to seniors. Don’t they realize we’re the
ones with the money these days? Personally, I’m all for bringing back the running
board. It makes it easier to get in and out of a car without stretching your legs
so far that your panty hose gets a tear in it if you’re a lady and, if you’re
a gent, you suddenly find yourself dressing on the opposite side from what you’re
used to.
I picked up a magazine about cars at the tire store the other
day and there was a list of auto accessories that you can’t be without. Who are
they kidding? Not us seniors. We can live without any of them. Who needs a car
cover when you could park it in your own garage if your husband would clean it
out and anyway, those covers never fit right and there’s a warning label that
says the paint could peel off your car in hot weather. And we don’t need seat
covers inside to “protect the car seats from stains, cigarette burns, tears, etc.”
First of all, we’re not slobs who leave stains on seats, most of us don’t smoke
any more, and I haven’t torn any seats since the rest home took away my scissors.
We
don’t need a steering wheel cover either to “help to protect the steering wheel
from scratches.” What do you think we do, grip the wheel with our teeth? Some
of us leave them home in a jar anyway.
Child safety seats don’t matter
to us now, and actually, they never did. Mothers used to cradle babies in their
arms and some of those babies grew up to be president. Nowadays, babies have to
be tied in facing the back seat and they can’t even look out the window. Today’s
babies will probably grow up thinking the world is made of gray corduroy.
We
don’t need the handheld vacuum they touted in the article, either. Personally,
I like a car where you have to wipe your feet off after you get out. That’s what
I call “character.”
Car designers better come up with something seniors
want to drive. After all, when nature decrees that some of us get shorter, it
compensates by giving us a tall order of common sense.
Copyright Maggie
Van Ostrand
"A Balloon
In Cactus" August
13, 2009 column
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