Ingrid Steffensen - Fast girl: dont brake until you see the face of God and other good advice from the racetrack

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Table of Contents

To Mr. B

CHAPTER ONE

Finding Wonder Woman

Lets start in medias race: Im sitting in the hot grid. Im waiting patiently to get onto the racetrack in an orderly double row of about twenty other rumbling sports cars. First I do a mental check: crash helmet on and chinstrap securely fastened. Neck brace underneath. Driving gloves on. Wraparound sunglasses firmly seated on my nose. Lip gloss accurately applied. Six-point harness pulled so tight my boobs and thighs are smooshed. Air conditioner off. Windows down. Plenty of gas. All gauges reading well. Im good to go.

So then I start to sing.

Shes a brick (pause, pause, pause) HOWSE.

Mighty, mighty, just lettin it all hang out.

I beat my flame-retardant gloved hands on the steering wheel to emphasize the pauses.

Shes a brick (baow, baow, baow) HOWSE.

Shes the one, the only one, whos built like an Amazon.

It helps to settle my stomach and my nerves, all buzzing with anxiety in anticipation of the signal to go. Since Im the only girl in the group, the lyrics help wind me up. Plus, Ive always wanted to be built like a brick house, despite my modest 34Bs.

Shake it down, shake it down, shake it down now.

Shake it down, shake it down, shake it down now.

I sound like the audio track to a cheap porno flick from the seventies, but nobody can hear you if you have a sport exhaust.

Now I can see the previous group of cars obediently parading off the track. That means were up. My heart starts to beat even faster. After theyve all filed off and the walkie-talkies confirm that the track is clear, the guy at the front of the line starts waving us into the chute. You!he points at a drivergo!and his finger swoops toward the chute. Yougo. Yougo. And so on down the line until its my turn. I give him a smile and a thumbs-up, turn into the chute, accelerate modestly, and gently shift into second as I approach the flagger at the end of the chute. He waves me on, I give a little wave back, and I settle my hands on the wheel. I put my game face on, press the accelerator pedal down, hear the engine shriek into life, the force pressing my back into my seat, andhoo-ahh, Im off, baby! Down the track I rocket, heading for another twenty-five precious minutes of sphincter-clenching wrestling with a ton of squirrely machinery and the non-negotiable outer limits of physics. Dude.

I PRACTICE GOOD periodontal hygiene. I sort and I recycle and I bring reusable shopping bags to the grocery store. Im the kind of gal who cleans the lint trap after every load. I wear sunscreen, get regular exercise, and eat plenty of fiber. I live in a nice three-bedroom house with central air in a charming New Jersey suburb [insert snarky Jersey snub of choice here] with a husband, a preteen daughter, a fluffy little embarrassment of a dog, and a few sadly struggling houseplants. What in the name of all thats sane, sensible, and low fat is someone like me doing on a racetrack?

This is the story of a nice, conservative, cultured woman who led a nice, conservative, cultured life in a nice, conservative, cultured suburban enclavehey, wake up! Im not done yetwho had her life turned upside down and her expectations of herself utterly transformed through the unlikeliest of means: high-performance driving on closed racetrack circuits. This was a woman who thought her story was written, her path mapped out, her self-image well defined, until one daythinking shed be a good sport and maybe learn something about what made her car-crazed husband tickshe wodged a helmet on her head, took her tiny car to the racetrack, and learned how to drive it really, really fast. What began as a companionable lark became a full-blown obsession, and in the course of an eventful year, she discovered high-performance sports car driving to be an exhilarating antidote to the shackles of post-feminist suburban conformity. That woman isand this still comes as a surprise every timeme.

AND WHO AM I? I grew up in small-town Pennsylvania with a father who designed traditional, colonial-style furniture for a local furniture company, and a mother who was born in northern Germany. I had a younger brother, and we all lived the American dream in a brick house with a piebald dog named Perry and a succession of ill-fated guinea pigs. The backyard of my house backed up to the deep backyard of another familys house, and thats where my boy-next-door lived. His name was Charlie, and I was going to marry him. We spent hours and hours playing together, alternating backyards. His Carolina-raised mom would make us fresh lemonade or iced tea, and the best thing about that was the special silver stirring spoons that had long hollow handles attached to their bowls: They were simultaneously stirring spoons and straws in one, and I thought they were brilliant. Wed dump several spoonfuls of sugar in the bottom of our glasses, and then wed slurp up the sugary sludge through those special spoon-straws. Why the spork caught on and the stroon did not is beyond me. Drinking sweet iced tea through a silver stroon on a hot summer afternoon: Life doesnt get any better than that.

Except maybe when wed go up to Charlies bedroom and read his comics. Lucky Charlie had a big bed with a patterned chenille bedspread, and wed lounge around on it and read his DC and Marvel comic books while the knobby chenille dug red runnels into the skin of our elbows. Charlie and I would play superheroes, too. He was still pretty attached to a threadbare, tattered green baby blanket, and it was often tied around his neck as a cape, endowing him with superpowers. Many afternoons were spent flying off the swing set, making spittle-filled gunfire noises, and saving the planet from evil.

superfriends!

Charlie, being a boy, could be any one of a pantheon of superheroes. Look at me, Im SUPERman! hed yell, launching himself from the armrest of the hideous rust-colored brocade sofa that had been banished to the basement playroom. His green cape fluttered behind him, and despite the thick, prismatic glasses he had to wear for his wandering eye, to me he was completely believable as the Man of Steel.

The next play session had Charlie, with his stocky little seven-year-old frame, recreating the pectoral-flexing posturing familiar to bodybuilders the world over.

Raaaaargh, Im the HULK, hed pipe in his childish alto, and I could just see him grow larger and start to turn green.

The gleeful declaration, Its clobberin time, announced Charlies transformation into the grinning, granite-clad and fissured Thing, ready to tackle any Skrull that came our way.

He could be Batman or Spider-Man, Flash Gordon, the Green Arrow, or Shaggy from Scooby-Doo for that matter, but as a girl in the seventies, my options were much more limited. I dabbled occasionally with the Invisible Woman, but being invisible just wasnt all that seductive. As a freckled little girl with a homemade haircut, I was already mostly invisible to the world anyway. Supergirl was also pretty unsatisfying. Like Robin, she was just a sidekick, and sidekicks never get the glory, the bad guy, or any respect. Theyre eternally stuck in Ed McMahon Limbo, wearing dorky glasses and guffawing at other peoples jokes.

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