Approaching a Major Life Intersection? Drive a Pickup

Pondering a personal pattern between trucks and confidence

Maybe it was confiding that the me in my mind’s eye is still 29 and driving a pickup (something I did in last week’s post). Maybe it’s anticipating, as the weather warms, the first kayak season with my current truck. Whatever activated my brain to connect these memories, I realized this week that when navigating major intersections in my life, expected or not, I’ve been driving a pickup truck.

My three trucks (from left to right): a Ford Ranger, Toyota Tacoma, and Ford Maverick.

A teal 1993 Ford Ranger was my first—my first pickup and the first vehicle I’d purchased new. I’d been married about two years, worked in corporate banking, and was earning a master’s in teaching so I could transition to public education.

Little did I know that by the time I stopped driving that truck seven years later, I’d have divorced my husband, shifted from classroom teaching to school librarianship, spent time solo, be an out lesbian in my first committed relationship with a woman, and have just purchased a house with her.

I loved that truck. With only four cylinders, it couldn’t beat anyone off the stripe at a green light, but it was easy to bungee my kayak into the bed or pull into a mulch lot and have a bucket-load dropped in the back.

And toward the end of those seven years, when my attraction to women blockaded the road and refused to let me weave around it, driving a truck did something else too. It made me feel sexy.

Suddenly, I understood why those boy classmates in my teenage years put so much effort into waxing and polishing their old Camaros, Trans-Ams, and Mustangs—like male bowerbirds that build and decorate elaborate bowers to attract a mate. I’d never felt this way before.

Whether it was nostalgia for the standard 1962 Ford truck with a wood-plank bed that Dad drove when I was a kid, the physicality of working a clutch and stick-shift again like I had on my first car, or something else, the Ranger boosted my confidence.

A few months after my divorce, I pressed a “Girls Kick Ass” sticker onto the dash. I felt like I could do that too.

The stick-shift 1962 Ford truck we had when I was a kid (on left) and (on right) the interior of my first stick-shift truck.

In my last year driving my kick-ass Ranger, I met my former partner. Soon, we bought a house, and I traded the truck to my brother for a portable generator (our house was prone to power outages) and bought a Ford Focus. I appreciated the bump in fuel efficiency on my longer commute, but the Focus attracted mechanical issues the way I attract mosquitoes. Seriously, there’s something about me that woos those pesky bloodsuckers better than a bug zapper, so blue was an appropriate color for that car. As soon as I paid it off, I bought another truck: a Toyota Tacoma.

With six cylinders, it delivered on practicality with more zip than the Ranger and its automatic transmission made stopping on downtown hills a breeze. But it caught the Focus’s recall-contagion. Whether it was those headaches, the tan paint, the absence of a clutch, or the fact that it wasn’t my first truck, the confidence it imparted was more bounce than swagger.

Still, more changes were afoot. I was on the cusp of completing a master’s in library and information science so I could apply for college library positions. I continued to enjoy working with teens, but the standardized test frenzy had razed meaningful research from high schools, and I needed to be somewhere where research still mattered. I was also struggling in my relationship with my partner and had recently found, after months of restless searching, a spiritual home in Unitarian Universalism.

Even though the Tacoma didn’t impart as much inner swagger as the Ranger, in the four years before I traded it for a red Honda Fit, I not only finished my degree and changed jobs but also left my partner, purchased my first house on my own, and met and fell in love with the woman who’s now my wife. Apparently, truck ownership was not for the timid or change-resistant—at least not if I was driving.

I drove the Fit, a fun, dependable, remarkably spacious little car I dubbed Ladybug, for 14 years. In 2017, around year seven, my truck urge resurfaced, but the compact pickups that appealed to me, like the Nissan Frontier and Honda Ridgeline, had higher prices than I was willing to pay. I also wanted my next compact truck to be a hybrid, and no one offered that—yet. I started saving for a down payment, hoping the Fit would stay fit until the right truck came along.

My Honda Fit living up to its name with a 9’1” flatwater kayak inside.

It did. When Ford announced the release of the Ford Maverick for 2022, Ladybug was still chugging. The Maverick hybrid promised 40MPG (city) and an entry-level price under $20,000. Skeptical about owning a new model before consumers got behind the wheel, I reigned in my enthusiasm and waited until the next order window opened for the 2023. Although the waiting that followed tested even my well-developed practice of delayed gratification, 15 months later (which crossed into the 2024 model), I took delivery on Mesa, a hot pepper red Maverick hybrid.

I’ve already used Mesa to haul mulch and get my kayak to the river. I anticipated those benefits—and the 40MPG (sometimes better!) for city driving. But until she’d been in our driveway a few months and the daffodils bloomed, I hadn’t reflected on why the draw to drive a truck again was so strong. I wonder now if, deep in my subconscious, my brain sensed the uncertainty, fear, and excitement I feel about retirement and figured more confidence could help. And based on the embers in its memory of the Ranger and Tacoma, it deduced another truck might provide that boost. What role did that remembered confidence play?

What about the sexiness factor? you might ask. Luckily, my wife Annette already makes me feel both loved and sexy (an intoxicating combo), so I don’t need a truck for that. But does it make you feel a little sexier anyway? you might persist. Hmmm (smiling). Maybe. I’ll get back to you on that.

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Here are TWO poems for your pocket this week that include pickup trucks: “So This is Nebraska” by Ted Kooser (in the available audio recording, Kooser explains why he wrote the poem and how writing it surprised him) and “Kentucky Blason” by Karen Harryman (shared with permission using a photo of the poem from the pages of Auto Mechanic’s Daughter). A blason (or blazon) “catalogues the physical attributes of a subject,” in this case, Harryman’s beloved Kentucky.

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What quirky factors boost your confidence? What unexpected patterns have you noticed between the major intersections in your life? Leave a comment below.