Am I The Maserati or the Minivan?

Today I sat in traffic on the 101 freeway behind a beautiful, new, dark blue Maserati.

It still had the paper license plates and I bet if the windows were open you could smell that heavily leather-laden “new car smell”,  you know, the one that sends my sister to heaven and makes me nauseous.

In the stop and go traffic of “rush hour” everything that makes a car like that stand above the rest is lost. The speed, the zero-to-sixty ratio, even the sticky tires with the sexy rims are a waste.

It is a caged​ animal just rumbling along, waiting for the freedom of the open road to unleash its full potential.

I was admiring the low purr of its engine, (which sounds like Vin Diesel gargling a 2005 Duckhorn Merlot) when out of the corner of my eye I caught the flash of headlights in my rearview mirror.

Approaching on my left, zipping in and out of the way-too-small-for-a-car spaces that we leave between ourselves and the vehicles around us when we’re stuck in traffic—was a beat-up​ brown minivan.

Determined to get where she needed to go was what I can only assume was a single-minded​, highly focused soccer mom on her way to drop her kids at school. Or maybe she was killing lots of birds with one stone by taking them all to the orthodontist at the same time. Nevertheless, it was obvious by her harrowing lane splitting that she was running late.

As she zipped past me on the shoulder I counted two car seats and numerous other kids way past the need for that kind of restraint.

She was a mom on a mission in a minivan​ loaded with kids. Is there anything else more terrifying?

I don’t think so.

I watched traffic do that thing it does when a motorcycle or other crazy tries to squeeze by and it feels thisclose. We all took a collective deep breath and sucked in our sides, crossed our fingers, and prayed we’d escape with our side mirrors intact.

In a move right out of body-guard-driving-school where they teach you how to maneuver a car through the eye of a needle without spilling the martini of the VIP in the back seat, while simultaneously shooting a bad guy with the gun you had strapped to your thigh and making a peanut-butter and jelly sandwich—she slipped past the Maserati like butter.

A big ‘ol buttered up brown minivan.

Before I could finish the banana I’d brought as sustenance, she was gone, lost in the sea of cars that weren’t moving. She basically crowd-surfed the 101 because THESE KIDS GOTTA GET WHERE THEY NEED TO BE BY NINE! DAMNIT!

That’s when it hit me: Am I the Maserati? Or the minivan?

Do I overpromise​ and underperform​?
Do I have a lot of fancy extras that will never be utilized to their full potential?
Am I shiny and do I smell like leather?

Perhaps.

Or am I more like the minivan​​, a perfectly ordinary workhorse who gets things done?
Am I unafraid to look a little messy and crazy to get where I need to go?
Will I use the shoulder and crowd-surf over the ones who are standing in my way?

After careful consideration, (okay, like five minutes) I think I’m both depending on the day, week, month or year.

I’d say in general—I’m a high-performance mess. Maybe a Maserati minivan?

Which one are you?

Carry on,
xox