Sooner or later all vehicles develop minds of their own (and that's where the trouble starts).

A momentous event in the life of the Martin children: today they drove home from church backward and nobody was killed.

But seriously, it’s a good story.

It started this weekend when Mom and Dad left for a high school reunion in Lancaster and we had complete charge of the house for forty-eight hours.  There were squabbles about who would fold the laundry, who would cook the meals… heaven forbid someone doesn't do their share of the dishes… etc.  If you have siblings of your own, YOU know what I mean.  Anyhow, chore-duty got all sorted out and we survived, the only mishap being the van breaking down.  Which was quite an event.  (Readers, please take note: this was NOT the new one just purchased earlier this week, it was the big red-and-white dinosaur bus that’s served us well for quite a while.) 

After we left church and piled into the van, Jake shifted into reverse, pulled out of the parking space, and prepared to exit the parking lot… only to be met with the vaguely crunchy sound of grinding automobile parts and a vehicle that absolutely, positively would not budge.  We sat there for the next five minutes, creating an obvious roadblock while Jake fiddled with the gear stick and the rest of us yelled helpful hints from the backseat.  At last it was clear that the van would drive in reverse, and only reverse.  So we set off slowly, trying to ignore the puzzled stares from people in other cars as we inched out of the parking lot backward and pulled onto the street.  For the rest of the drive (only about a mile), Jake steered while the rest of us peered out of the windows and shouted advice like:

“Watch it!  You’re veering!”

 “Try not to drive on top of the yellow line!”

“Don’t run over that man!”

…and other such helpful tidbits.  We did make it home in one piece (props to Jake for some impressive driving) and left all pedestrians unscathed, as promised.  The van is now parked in an empty lot on top of South Allegheny hill, its fate to be determined.

    

The rest of the morning and afternoon included a crazy three-person game of basketball at the YMCA with Jake and Charlotte, culminating in Char literally ripping a sleeve off Jake’s T-shirt (much to everyone’s astonishment) and both of us falling to the floor in hysterical laughter while he examined the ragged remains.  To be fair, it wasn't really a basketball game – more like a lot of flailing, flinging, jumping on backs, and war whoops that happened to also involve a basketball somewhere in there.

These are the kinds of days that seem more rare and noteworthy lately, especially because it’s becoming quite obvious that I’m not the only one at home learning to grow up and live an adult life.  Or, you know, something at least resembling that.  Jake’s graduated, Charlotte is embarking on her second-to-last high school voyage as a junior, and Abby’s testing the waters as a freshman.  The older two have jobs during the week, and the youngest can usually be found behind mountains of homework.  (I don’t remember the mountain being quite so big when I was fifteen… hmm).  So it’s a bit strange, getting used to my younger siblings being all over the place, living their own lives, driving their own cars, working real jobs.  Coming home to find the house empty and wondering, “Where did they all go?”  I know that’s the nature of families, that independence is something that happens slowly and I guess you get used to being around each other less and less.  But sometimes I miss when we were little kids.

This will be my third year living at home since I've graduated high school.  Every year I've been telling myself it might be the last.  Not in a can’t-wait-to-get-out-of-here kind of way (though let’s be honest, who doesn't feel like that sometimes?).  More of a I-honestly-have-no-idea-what’s-coming-next kind of way.  It’s exciting to imagine what might be waiting up ahead.  But something I've been trying to learn and relearn over the past year or so is not to hold onto any of my plans too tightly.  Things are always changing.  Especially when you’re eighteen… nineteen… twenty…  Take this past January for example, when I was struck with possibly the worst bout of wanderlust I've ever experienced and started seriously thinking about buying one-way plane tickets to far-off places.  (Ahem… I say “seriously” but this particular strain of wanderlust ripped through my system in about two weeks before I was back to a normal spring semester of college).  Then about a month later, I applied to Millersville University, got accepted, and had high hopes of starting there as an English education major this fall.  So if you would have asked me where I’d be come September, oh, seven or eight months ago, I wouldn't have said here.

Yet here I am.  Once again thinking it might be the last year at home.  But who knows?  Here’s to crazy basketball and temperamental vehicles from the dark ages.  This is the stuff of life as of this semester, this month, right now.