Prius vs. Mom-mobile

When I was in high school, Cher stood on an aircraft carrier wearing a cross between half of a bathing suit and a wrestling singlet, pondering what she would do if she could turn back time. On Saturday I found out, but I didn’t have to wear any inappropriate clothing to do so.

All I did was get behind the wheel of our 2004 Toyota Prius. That’s the car I used to drive every day back before we had kids. I drove it for a little while after my daughter was born, too, but when she was a year or so old, I switched to my mom’s 2004 Chrysler PT Cruiser. My mom died a few months before Lucy was born, and I thought it would be neat to bomb around town in her beloved car, kind of like  she was there with us in spirit for any adventures and hijinks that we girls may have had. (It turns out that babies aren’t up for many wacky adventures, but as a new mom, I didn’t know that then.)

So we practically gave away our 1995 Dodge Neon to Carmax, then my husband started driving “my” Prius and I started driving the PT Cruiser. While the nostalgia factor is big with mom’s old Cruiser, the car doesn’t have much else going for it if you are any kind of a car buff. It is certainly road-worthy, and is stylish with a two-tone paint pattern, but it lacks some simple comforts that the Prius has going for it, such as a sturdy place to store CDs and, oh, the ability to accelerate while driving up a slight incline.

I happened to drive the Prius again on Saturday morning when I ran an errand to Towson. My mother-in-law had borrowed the Cruiser to run errands of her own and took Lucy along for the ride, and she couldn’t use her own car because it isn’t equipped with hundreds of dollars of Consumer Reports-approved child safety seats.  That left me with one option: driving the Prius.

After adjusting the seat and the mirrors and choosing a CD (all things Joe would have to undo the next time he drove it – sorry, Joe), it was like the car became a time machine. I felt like I was once again in my late 20s, driving around listening to the Wavves instead of an endless three-song loop of Taylor Swift’s “She’s Not Scared – She’s Fearless,” "The Romeo Song,” and “The T-shirt Song” (Lucy’s improvised toddler titles for Swift’s hits). There were no children chatting or babbling in the backseat, and for the half-hour round trip, I was a version of my former self.

It was a nice ride while it lasted, but I know that I wouldn’t really want to turn back time. I’d much rather see where the ride in my PT Cruiser takes me.