WRY BREAD: A Slice of My Life

in Pursuit of Dough

When Car Talk Turns to Money Talk,

 It’s Time to Pull Over 

By Gail Harlow 

n this mobile society, we do just about everything in our cars that we do in the privacy of our homes. Women put on lipstick behind the wheel (I’m guilty), men shave, we read the newspaper and open our mail at long stoplights, work, eat, change clothes, drink coffee, watch DVD’s, bank at drive-through ATM’s. And as for what goes on in parked cars, well…let’s just say there’s a good reason why some people nickname their vehicles “the lovemobile.”

There’s an intimate quality about the interior space of our cars that rivals that of a church confessional. In them, we commune with ourselves, when we’re not singing to the radio, and it’s often the place where we are most honest with ourselves about what and how we’re feeling. It’s where we worry about and work out our problems. Frequently, we want to share our thoughts, so we reach for our cell phones. With a Nokia or Ericsson or Motorola pressed to the ear of easily a quarter of all the drivers I pass every day on the way to and from work, sometimes it seems as though cars have become mobile phone booths.

 Whereas, during drive time, most cars have single occupants (car pools just haven’t caught on around here), look around on weekends and you’ll see passengers: Soccer moms chauffeuring their kids. Couples going food shopping or visiting the folks. Girlfriends driving to the mall.

It’s always interesting to watch couples in cars. Usually, it’s the guy behind the wheel, the woman in the passenger seat. (“It’s a control thing,” one of my friends, whose last boyfriend hated flying because he wasn’t “driving” the plane, says.) Some are silent, like those sad couples we’ve all seen in restaurants who don’t have anything to say to one another anymore. I’m not talking about companionable silence.

Some are laughing and smiling, looking at each other lovingly, telling jokes or catching up. Others seem serious or annoyed, the woman’s talking, the man’s frowning, or vice versa. We’re all so busy, so caught up in our own worlds; the car is one of the few places where a husband and wife have time to talk. If they both work, they’re too tired to “communicate” when they get home; or their schedules conflict and one’s walking out the door just as the other gets home. If they have kids, they don’t want to talk about serious issues—like money—in front of them. Car talk has replaced pillow talk. Cars are the place where everything from sweet nothings to whispered confidences to accusations get made.

In a car, we are and have a captive audience (though I have, on more than one occasion, threatened to get out at the next stoplight when engaged in a heated battle of the sexes).  So, after the pleasantries, the weekly catch-up, the jokes and observations that good couples share, it’s easy to understand why car talk often turns to money talk. Should we refinance? Are we spending too much? Why are you spending so much? What do we want to do when we retire? How are we going to pay for Jane’s wedding?  Some of the most important decisions couples make are made during the “mobile communications” they have with each other, driving back and forth from the mall or the doctor’s office or the in-laws. Before we know it, our life’s destinations have changed, as casually as we shift lanes.

There is no downloadable MapQuest road map for the life journeys we take; money, sex, marriage, divorce, and health are complex issues too important to hash out in the front seat of a mid-sized compact. But talking in the car is a start, as is the quiet time we spend alone in our cars thinking about what we have to say.

Last weekend, I was driving behind a couple in an SUV. The man behind the wheel looked rakish in a worn baseball cap, and he kept turning his head to talk animatedly to his companion. They looked like they were having a wonderful time. When I passed them, I glanced over and saw that it was a large, longhaired dog sitting in the passenger seat. I’ll bet you a dollar they weren’t talking about kennel rates or the price of bones or whether the dog should be spayed.

Sometimes, car talk is the best kind of cheap entertainment.

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Gail Harlow is the Founding Editor of MAKING BREAD: The Magazine

for Women Who Need Dough. 

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