I am not a knock-down, drag-out rebel, but about once every five years or so and sometimes more often (some of the grass around the trees in our backyard has turned brown for some reason), I let down my hair and say, to hell with the rules.
The other night was one of those breakout moments. I had just checked for my mail at the community mailbox around the corner from my home, exactly half a block away. It was dark out and when I got back into my car, I started it up and drove away without fastening my seatbelt. Yes, go ahead and report me and I will go quietly. An anarchist walks – and drives – among us.
Here’s another secret. I do this every so often when I get my mail at night. And it feels great. Not the rule-breaking part of it, but the unrestrained aspect. It’s like unbuttoning your pants after a big meal. Feels so good.
I have never once protested seatbelts. I remember a day when kids were flying through windshields. Young people I went to school with died that way. Seatbelts, padded dashes, recessed knobs, all made wonderful sense.
But except for the incredible danger part, driving without seatbelts was pretty cool. And I miss the day of bench seats in the front of cars and trucks. Bucket seats were for sports cars only. You could drive down the road with your girlfriend pressed up beside you and you were the happiest guy on the planet.
My memory for this is not perfect, but I think seatbelts began to be installed in cars before laws were passed making the wearing of them mandatory. So we kept busy burying the belts inside the seats so they couldn’t be found. And in those early days, there were no shoulder belts.
So I drove home the other night without seatbelts, but no bench seat and no girlfriend pressed up against me. Had those two elements been in place, I might be somewhere down near Chicago by now.
©2019 Jim Hagarty
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