brave new blog

I cringe to use my first post in the way I am about to, because I'm afraid it will look like a convenience blog. In using it right away for displaying my college essays to the general uninterested public, I am not only giving it an air of blatant non-creativity, I am also unabashedly copy-catting my best friend Molly. What can I say? It's a grand idea on Molly's part, it's a good way to critique your own writing, and I really need to get rolling on the college essays. So, I will charm you with my innate sense of creativity and artistic vision later. For now, this is more for myself than anything. Don't feel obliged to read (but if you do, please tell me what you think).

I am no longer afraid of graveyards. Those hold-your-breath-'til-you're-past days are long gone. Now I'm just petrified of driving in them.
When I was a tender eleven years old, my neighbor's grandfather, a jovial man who religiously drinks chili powder in his tea and is a dead ringer for Santa Claus, decided it was time we learned how to drive. Into the family van we piled, excited to an unhealthy degree about this forbidden taste of teenage-hood.
This was no joy ride, however. Papa put us through the paces with grave intensity and detailed instruction. The poor minivan bucked and screeched its way through the alarmingly narrow cemetery path as we received strict direction and commentary, the most memorable of which echoes in the dark recesses of my brain to this day. This particular reproof came from an extremely serious Papa after, having slightly cut a turn, I intruded a few inches into the space of a resident of the graveyard.
"See now, if that had been a mother with a baby carriage right there-" he paused to gesture grimly at the newly-formed rut- "know what would've happened?"
He smugly paused here again, his wide-eyed stare boring into my very soul. Hesitantly, I shook my head.
"Mashed POTATOES!" he yelled, adding a well-timed hand clap.
With this poignant exclamation, he settled back into the passenger seat calmly and, waiting patiently until I had detached myself from the ceiling of the van, motioned for me to continue driving.
A multitude of alarmed shouts and dramatic warnings later, we returned safely home, sufficiently traumatized and exceedingly proud of ourselves for getting a jump start on honing our driving expertise. Years later, I discovered that the very same cemetery where I'd been initiated into the the world of driving was rumored to be haunted. But for me, the thing that sends a shiver down my spine when I drive (carefully) past that graveyard today has nothing to do with ghosts. It has to do with the remembrance of two innocent words uttered on a pretty autumn day: mashed potatoes.