Friend John said when he took his 10-year-old car in to be serviced the mechanic said his brakes looked brand new, and asked his secret.

He told the guy, “I don’t let my wife drive it. She rides the brakes.”

Ouch!

I confessed that my husband, Bill, always said I did too.

We talked on the way to an all-you-can-eat pizza buffet without John’s wife, who already had digestive issues.

Once in Enid, John demonstrated how to coast to the next stoplight, and the next, and … you get the picture.

John also tinkered with the radio, temperature control and rear view mirror.

He’s a clone of my husband, I decided, then recalled a night in the ’80s when we drove home from The City in a rainstorm.

Bill adjusted everything in his Bronco from the seat to the outside mirror, changed the tape player, and even talked on his bag phone (that we called a Sid-A-Phone because he bought it from Sid Hobbs).

He slowed down when the rain let up and stopped at the top of a hill near the Rigdon Place on the Dover-Crescent Rd. He got out and did what guys can do when they’ve gotta go.

Meanwhile, I prayed that a semi wouldn’t hit us, and worried how the accident report would read.

Bill said he was sleepy when he got back in, so I offered to drive.

He refused, but told me to talk and keep him awake. So I did. Non-stop.

It worked. He got us safely into our driveway only to see a possum in the headlights. Except, it didn’t play possum.

“Where’d it go?” I asked.

“Under my Bronco,” Bill said. “Get out. It won’t bite you!”

“You don’t know that,” were my last words before he ran in the house.

My husband, a true gentleman if you ever knew one, let me sit there until the giant-size Dr Pepper I’d consumed rushed me inside.

He was asleep in his recliner.

I woke him up to go to bed, and asked him why he hadn’t let me drive if he was so tired.

“You always ride the brakes,” he said, as we walked down the hallway to the bedroom.

“Huh? I do what? No I don’t. Do I?”

“You can quit talking now,” he said. “I don’t need to stay awake anymore.”