It's not that I hate driving

It's not that I hate driving. In fact, I like it a lot.

No, I don't like driving down I-95 through Chester and through the Blue Route "weave area" on a warm Saturday evening after everybody's been cooped up all winter long, and cars and buses and SUVs are crammed in one on top of the other, and everybody's doing 70 mph except for the young guy zipping by who must be doing a cool 98 mph on his way to . . . Claymont?

What I do like is returning to Philly at 1:45 a.m., and the stretch past the airport is empty and looks post-apocalyptic, and I've found some goofy trance nonsense on the radio, and I can cruise at an effortless, unhurried 80 mph, and it brings to mind riding halfway up the New Jersey Turnpike with my high-school boyfriend in his mom's station wagon with some equally ridiculous Art of Noise on the tape deck, and then feeling really grateful that that was 20-odd years ago and I don't have to be a teenager ever again, but still nostalgic for the solidness and the 350 V8 engines in the kinds of cars I drove 20-odd years ago.