Gizmos

Cars being what they are to our lives, we have come to expect a substantial amount of creature comfort from them, as well as a healthy portion of gizmos. Gizmos are traditionally viewed as guy things but, at the turn of the century, it seems that both sexes like their toys. No wait....uhhh. It seems that both sexes like their....well, let's stick to gizmos.

Ford has been touting the female design team that did so much work on their mini-van. Talk about gizmos. Wow!! Electric sliding doors. Twin stereos. They even have a proximity sensor that beeps at you when you get close to an object (or person) while you are backing up. Buck Rogers, eat your heart out. Come to think of it....Buck Rogers probably wouldn't be jealous until the proximity sensor vaporizes whatever it is (object or person) that you are about to back into. Hey!! can't be late for tennis.

I like my gizmos like anybody else. Though Cruise Control has been around for a long time it is definitely my all time favorite. I still remember the first time I set the cruise on a car and the gas pedal pulled away from my foot. What a weird feeling. Almost like that falling feeling you get when you are about to go to sleep. You know you are there, you just don't feel like you are in control. My other favorite is the automatic electric window. One touch - down they go. One touch - up they go. The drive through has never been easier. Look Ma, no hands !

Of all the gizmos I have, I wonder why my car has a tachometer. Am I going to "red line" my Lexus? The car has 350 computers built in. Get one of them to take care of that. Tachometers are a throwback from when gears didn't change automatically and men liked to talk RPMs instead of IPOs. When I was a teenager, a guy I knew said that he used his tach to figure his speed instead of the speedometer since it was more accurate. Which means, of course, that he would have to know the ratio of every gear in the transmission and differential as well as the circumference of the rear tires AND be able to mentally perform complex mathematical calculations without dropping the ashes off the end of his cigarette. I was in class with this guy, I don't think so.

In the late '70s I had a 1969 Pontiac GTO that had a tachometer, even though it had an automatic transmission. It was a bit "souped up" looking but tame enough that when my mother needed to borrow a car for a couple of weeks I didn't hesitate in letting her use it. The day I was getting the car back from her we were all sitting around talking and drinking coffee. Mom told me she thought something was wrong with the speedometer on the car and I then asked why. She said that even while she was completely stopped the speedometer was jumping around between 7 and 9 miles per hour. I choked and spit the coffee out of my mouth like I was in a Three Stooges movie. Some of you already know what happened. After I caught my breath, I know I turned gray with the realization that she had been using the tachometer as the speedometer. I didn't know gear ratios. I didn't know the circumference of my rear tires. I did know that if the tach said "30" ( x 100 = 3000 RPM) that the speedometer was usually around 60 MPH.

"Mother, didn't you notice the other big dial that pointed to "0" when you were sitting still?"

"No."

"Do you realize that when you thought you were driving 35 MPH that you were probably going about 70!?"

"Ohhhh.....maybe that's why your sister was hanging onto the door handle so tight."

And this is the woman that wouldn't let me run with scissors in my hand.