DAY 88: SHATTERED WINDSHIELD

     My mom wasn't the best driver.  Or that's what my dad said about her.  In fact he was pretty relentless about it.  That was his thing to tease her about--not driving well and getting her license as an adult.
     Mommy grew up in Brooklyn, NY and never had to drive anywhere.  She took the subway or walked to all of her destinations.  So she didn't get her driver's license until she was married, lived in Ohio and was twenty-four (or thereabouts).
     Imagine getting your license at twenty-four.  It'd be strange.  Super strange.  And probably a bit scary.  The deck was stacked against her as she learned to drive as an adult and it became fodder for my dad's jokes.
     I'll admit noticing she was a bit of a nervous driver.  But I never thought she was a bad driver.  Dad perpetuated that myth to the point where it became unfair.  It's not really your fault or your bad driving if a rock, kicked up by an eighteen wheeler, hits your windshield and crakes it.  However, that wasn't the case in my house growing up.  You broke it, you bought it was basically my dad's motto.  More like, I think you broke it, so you broke it.  That's how Dad decided it was Mom's fault that the Honda's windshield cracked.            
     That's also how Dad decided that I caused his Nissan's flat tire.  You see I'd convinced the neighborhood kids to help me build a clubhouse.  We'd find pieces of wood in various empty lots, drag them to the side of my house and start nailing them together in a ramshackle fashion.  We never completed the clubhouse.  If we had, it would have been pretty sad--a one room shack with no place to move around. We would've all been standing in that clubhouse shoulder to shoulder.  It would have been tiny.  Good thing I didn't go into architecture.
     Anyway, back to how Dad's flat tire was my fault.  Well, I used nails to build the clubhouse, so naturally a nail caused Dad's flat.  It doesn't really help my case that he found some nails spilled on the floor of our garage right around the time of the flat.  But (now) as a lawyer, I'd like to point out there were many other places a nail could've been on the streets or parking lots Dad frequented.  But I'll give up now, because it was my fault, almost like the shattered windshield was Mom's fault.  That's just the way it was.