Life with Samantha
can be plum crazy

Robyn’s Hood
By Robyn McCloskey

Three years ago our oldest daughter, Mallory, who is now 19, took us through that proverbial rite of parental passage by getting her driver’s license.
Mallory was determined not to waste a minute of her eligibility and insisted on taking her permit test on her birthday. She took her driver’s test six months to the day of getting her permit. I was only too happy to watch this process unfold, as my immediate thought of having a daughter who drove was, "I’ll never have to go to the mall again!"
We bought a slightly beat-up Toyota Corolla in which she happily tooled around town, drove herself to and from Starbucks (which, ironically, is within walking distance of our home) and willingly took her sisters shopping.
Now here we are three years later — she is a freshman at Penn State and her Corolla sits idle in our driveway. That is until today, because today her younger sister Samantha just got her driver’s license and is now happily tooling around town in the more slightly beat-up Corolla. But her heart is set on a Jeep she spotted on eBay. It is a totally tricked-out vehicle with every Jeep bell and whistle imaginable.
It’s painted a vivid bright purple, and on the side in bold letters are the words Plum Crazy. Which kind of fits her to a tee. I know my first reaction to her wanting a Jeep should be to lecture her on the dangers of Jeeps, how I’ve heard people say in conversation, "Jeeps are junk." They say the ride is uncomfortable, the gas mileage stinks, and I can only think my daughter must be plum crazy.
But the truth is this car has Sam written all over it. It’s different, it stands out, and people notice it. Which is a lot like Sam. She is different, she stands out and people notice her. She is among the rare breed of teenage girls who are comfortable in their own skin . . . she has a lust for life that, if I could bottle and sell it, I’d make a mint.
Like her sister, Sam went for her driver’s permit on her 16th birthday, only she strolled into DMV wearing a pink rhinestone tiara that said Happy Sweet 16 and carrying Disney princess balloons, and thought nothing of it. And like her sister, she took her driver’s test six months to the day of receiving her permit.
She was partnered with a fragile-looking, elderly instructor for the test. When he gave her the good news that she had passed, she got so excited that she hugged him, which apparently is not the typical response.
She recalled that he recoiled a little and stammered, "I . . . I . . . I don’t usually get hugs." Then she proceeded to jump out of the car and break into a celebratory cartwheel, almost giving the little old man a heart attack as he mistook her gymnastics display for a fall and tried to rush to her side to help. By the time he jerked himself free of his seat belt, Sam was already back in the building, where people who had witnessed her enthusiasm erupted in applause, which may be a first for the DMV.
Sam is a life force, so much of a force that if her energy could be harnessed, the world’s challenge to conserve dwindling resources would be solved and Al Gore would be out of a job, again. She has always been this way. When she was younger there were days when my husband would come home from work and I would stare at him through glazed eyes, moaning, "One of us needs to be medicated, I don’t care if it’s her or me, but one of us needs some serious drugs."
Her energy sapped me of mine. In fact it took my husband nine years to convince me to have another baby. When Mal and Sam were little, people would often ask if we were going to go for a third child.
"Have you met Samantha?" I’d snap.
Now she’s sixteen and a half and in possession of a legal form of identification granting her the privilege and freedom that only a brand-new license can do.
Driving to Starbucks when she should be walking, driving herself to and from soccer practice, heading for babysitting gigs and the mall.
And maybe, just maybe, some day it will be in a Plum Crazy Jeep. ••
Robyn McCloskey’s column appears each week in the Northeast Times. She can be reached at crmccloskey@verizon.net