READING BETWEEN THE PINES

Most people view the car they drive as a direct portal to their super-shiny souls.

O.K. that’s not true.

They actually see their wheels as a reflection of the bulging, glossy, shark skin wallet poached off an endangered Great White on some spendy dive trip to Belize.

Not me though. I consider my car, or rather, my kick ass 2004 GMC Yukon XL truck, as a means to an end. It’s not pretty, but it gets the ankle-biters from Point A to Point B if not in style, then in one piece. Any first responder will tell you that in the case of oh, let’s say a mom of three who takes her eyes off the road while she’s trying to find the 2Pac station on Pandora and is so real she can’t figure out her smart phone? Big car wins. Period. And I like to win. Period.

So while my neighbors half-wave at me from the confines of their ergonomically correct, 8,000,000,000 miles to the gallon, time traveling, put fifteen kids from Africa through college or drive this Batmobilesque, star-stalker, status symbol? I’m letting the kids egg my truck. Since an appearance in the Summer Olympics is their best chance at higher education, practice makes perfect, and throwing an oval-shaped animal embryo at a stationary target is a lot like the shot put.

Plus I like to keep it real, and nothing says, “My girl is so down with that!” like a bullet hole. Well, a fake bullet hole that’s really a dent my babysitter put in the passenger side door bringing my girls back from hip-hop camp while I was getting my face blasted off during a chemical peel.

Fake bullet holes look cool as long as they aren’t on your body. Like veneers. Or a dirty wife beater. Or pulling out a huge wad of small bills wrapped in a fifty at the corner lemonade stand and pretending to donate a lot of money to the neighborhood kid’s two-week old dream to go to computer camp at Stanford when you’re really just dropping a George Washington.

When I’m trying to set a good example being down with it, sometimes I get bored. When I get bored I do stupid stuff, like blindfolding myself with the zebra print bandana my daughter won at hip-hop camp for being so fly during the lyrical portion of her routine.

When I’m blindfolded I feel super-chill, so I try to back into the garage using only four senses instead of all five. Like taste. Or smell. But mostly feel and sometimes sound. Occasionally I miss and actually hit the garage, because it didn’t smell like I thought it would, and not because I was trying to find 2Pac on Pandora and I couldn’t figure out my smart phone, or putting on a super-fun shade of Bonnie Bell lip gloss in the rearview mirror, or yelling at my kids.

Plus, to train for the Olympics or not get kicked out of the state of Colorado, my kids need to be fit. To cut corners and burn calories, I throw them in the Yukon, stream some 2Pac through my subwoofers, and blast the air. A lot of times it comes out hot instead of cold, especially when it’s like, 1,000,000,000 degrees outside, and we can get through Sting’s entire “Ashtanga Yoga for Homies” DVD while I’m chasing people on the highway in their Batmobilesque, star-stalker, status symbol rides who text while driving. I don’t care if parts fall off in-flight, so the truck’s especially awesome for harassing strangers, plus my state-required front license plate was ripped off at the car wash a long time ago, so it’s hard for the cops to catch me as I flee the scene with California Love blaring through my eight-speaker (well, three now), surround-sound system and a zebra print bandana hanging out the window.

So while you’re at the dealer parting with about $2K to repair an electrical short in the auto lift component of your rear door, I’ll be kickin’ it old school style, training my shorties for fame, and keepin’ it real for the moms of greater suburbia. Ahite?