“Do we have to go on the high road?” I’d ask my dad this question every time we had to drive somewhere. And if I had never been to where we were going, I’d ask him twice.

Sometimes, to my relief, he’d say, “No, I’m gonna take us on the low road today.”

The way my parents differentiated the two types of routes for me in a way I could understand was by calling them the “low road” and the “high road.” Because of this, I knew that if we stayed on the low road– city streets and back roads–then I had less of a chance of getting motion sick. The high road (the highway) was a different story.

Image by Joshua Choate from Pixabay

However, the car was really the biggest contributing factor to whether or not I got sick on a road trip. Tagging along with the least heavy-footed driver on the low road couldn’t change that fact if the car was new or still smelled like it was. Driving within the city or outside of it made no difference either. The smell of the upholstery did. It was enough to make my head feel swimmy as soon as the car started moving.

Two cars with personalities

My parents owned two cars. They had a 1979 Chevy Malibu, which they purchased new, and a non descript car with no air-conditioning that my dad bought off of a “relative by marriage” connection (a 1966 Ford Fairlane). The makes of the cars didn’t matter to me then, though. What did matter was that the cars we owned had personalities. These personalities were based entirely on how they made me feel when driving in them. So, naming the cars to indicate those feelings made complete sense to me. Since I watched lots of television, what better place to find names for the cars in my life than from sitcoms.

Herman

My mom’s car was brand new, so for me, that was an gigantic negative. I was fine in it if she was driving me and my brother to school or if we were going on a special trip to take my grandma to the grocery store. But if I had to go anywhere in that car that was not my usual haunts or if I had to get on “the high road”–the dizziness would commence. Because of this, I named this car “Herman”–after the Frankenstein-like character from the 1964 series, The Munsters. In my kid mind, that car was as undesirable as that loud, clunky monster with the weird black lips and hideous face. Needless to say, I did not like Herman–the car or the character.

Shirley

My dad’s car, dented and clunky with red vinyl seats, smelled only of lavender sprigs releasing their fresh scent as they swayed in the breeze of an open meadow. Really, it had no smell at all, which made it an ideal transporter for me. I named that car Shirley–after “Shirley Finney” from the sitcom Laverne & Shirley. I liked that character in particular because she was gentle, sweet, innocent, and would never intentionally hurt anybody. That’s how I felt about the Ford Fairlane. But since it didn’t have air-conditioning, and we could only travel with the windows up or down, it was not used for family drives or trips, like the one we took to Houston when I was eight. So, I was often stuck with Herman.

Fear and anxiety

For me, buckling up for a journey in the backseat of Herman overwhelmed me with fear. Because I got car sick in it so frequently, that created a recurring anxiety inside of me that I still feel today when I get inside new cars. Shirley offered freedom from this anxiety, which I didn’t often get to enjoy. On the weekends though, my mom worked. So, my dad had no choice but to drive us around in Shirley. The wind coming in through the open windows was intense–I once lost a teddy bear to it. It was also deafening and hair tangling, but that air flow was liberating.

A good day

Which car I was in for an outing meant the difference between a good day and a wasted one. Being on the high road in Herman meant that once I got home, I’d likely be confined to my bed after vomiting in our communal toilet. Riding in Shirley on the low road meant I’d feel normal. Then, if I was given permission, I could play Barbies with my neighborhood friends. I could lay out my blanket on the drive way (the one my grandma made for me with a clown pattern on it), and stay outside until supper.

What I learned from naming the cars

Naming the cars was my way of having some amount of control around my situation. It was also my way of communicating my fears and anxieties with the adults in my life. By the time I was 15, our car situation had changed. Shirley was refurbished and resold. She moved to the west side of town. My dad saw her once in a Churches Chicken parking lot. Herman eventually broke down enough that my parents bought a used blue Cadillac.

The truth is that Herman and Shirley were my teachers as a student of motion sickness. It took years, but I finally started speaking up for myself when someone wanted to drive me somewhere in a new car. I’d also decline being stuffed into a back seat with lots of people and an unskilled driver at the wheel for a trip downtown. Those two cars taught me how to advocate for myself as I got older. Doing so has given me many good days to make up for so many bad ones. I am grateful to have gained this knowledge, even though the journey has been extra bumpy and often required Dramamine.