Crash Test Girl Read online

  Even after Paul and I were solidly a couple, we continued to chase each other, and in many ways, we still do. We will always be smitten boyfriend-girlfriend at heart. We keep the romance alive by seducing each other with the tools of our trade. We are artists and we draw. We write. We create. We put our love on wood, on paper, on canvas. We make art about love that engenders love itself.

  We painted and crafted postcards out of paper and wood for each other early on, and sent them through the mail to each other, and have continued the tradition. We’ve sent hundreds of them, and keep them all. We have been passionate letter writers as well, on paper and through email. Paul is a soft-spoken Southern boy who might hesitate to say things, but he can write them! When I closed my Yahoo! email account and went through some of our stuff, I broke out in a sweat and was so glad I’d never been hacked! It was dirty! I hope my daughter never writes like that!

  Two Christmases ago, Paul wrote me 365 love letters and gave them to me in a box so that I’d start every day of the year reading a message of love. (I know. I’m spoiled rotten by him.) Some were short affirmations, like “I fell in love with your smile,” “I love you more than a fat kid loves cake,” or “I love you more than Kanye loves Kanye.” Some were longer about things we’d done and shared. Some were drawings or Polaroids of him doing something funny. Each letter and photo was unique, and effortful. I couldn’t believe the amount of time, thought, and energy it took to create this gift.

  And then he did it again last Christmas. Another 365 original love letters for me to open every day of the year, and this time he made them for my daughter, too.

  The man is a hero among my girlfriend community. He’s not so great about traditional holidays. He has to check my Wikipedia page for my birthday and our anniversary and often forgets them both, but who cares? He’s an unconventional person and thinker, and that’s how I like him. As much as I love my husband’s body, I love his mind more . . . until I see him in a wet suit, and then it’s back to his body.

  This year, he warned me not to expect another box of Christmas letters. “I don’t want to be predictable,” he said. As if.

  * * *

  For us, love wasn’t math. It was chemistry.

  Since there was no choice about our being together, I didn’t have to worry about whether he liked me a certain way or not, and all of the pressure I usually felt in a relationship was gone. When I stopped playing a role, I found the movie ideal of love.

  With Paul, I could be a vibrant independent woman who was unafraid to be romantic and in love. Paul was my breakthrough. He didn’t want me to be anything other than me. I never felt like I had to be his muse or his savior. He was too cool for that. Once I got rid of the idea of “type” or “boxes,” I realized he was the whole package. He was sweet, smart, kind, loyal, and cool—the perfect combination of the bad boy and the smart class clown.

  PAINT THE ROOM

  It sounds very romantic when I tell you about the postcards and Christmas letters, but Paul and I are a married couple and there are periods of time when we hate each other. Like every marriage ever, we fight over money and jealousies, the state of the house and who really does all the cleaning. I know it’s me (*winking*).

  One excellent piece of advice I got when we first got married was, “If you’re fighting, paint the room.”

  There was a time when the walls of our living room were all a different color.

  Having a kid is hard on a marriage. Lack of sleep and the stress of responsibility can throw the most perfect couple into a tailspin.

  When Stella was three weeks old, Paul went racing on his motorcycle and crashed on the track. He broke his collarbone and couldn’t get surgery for three days. After the initial shock and being grateful he was alive, I got resentful. I was still recovering from an exceptionally long, hard labor. I like to describe it as a wolverine punching her way out of me for forty-two hours. Along with postpartum healing, I was breastfeeding around the clock and exhausted. Paul was stir crazy and throwing a fit of Peter Pan rebellion against the newfound weight of being a dad. If he had come home from the race unbroken, maybe I would have let him off the hook with a couple of passive-aggressive personal jabs. But suddenly, I had two helpless creatures to take care of. No, make that five: We also had two puppies and an incontinent dying old dog that shit indoors.

  I bit my tongue until his collarbone was tended to. But the moment he was feeling better, I braced myself, and we had the biggest fight of our lives.

  And then we painted.

  Painting is a job you can do without talking, but you are still working together on a common goal. You have to keep going until it’s done, and then, you feel proud of what you’ve accomplished and can’t stay mad. During our rough patches, this house has been very colorful. These days, the walls are finally starting to match. By setting a goal—not painting a wall, but forgiving and moving on—to achieve together, you will get over anger and resentment faster.

  Our other make-up strategy is to get sweaty and dirty . . . on the bike trail.

  One time, Paul and I were riding in my hometown, and we took our regular bikes off road, which you’re not supposed to do. While we were on the trail, we saw this group of guys on dirt bikes coming down a hill really fast, and I saw my husband’s eyes light up. He said, “We should try that.”

  We bought cheap mountain bikes, and started riding together. Our adventures were like marital therapy. If we started out angry at each other, annoyed, or any other negative emotion, we’d be clear of it by the end, thanks to the adrenaline, nature, and shared experience. I started to really like the sport and did it on my own to relieve stress and alleviate anxiety. Paul went on to become a professional mountain biker. We still go on our nature rides together, especially if there is something we need to work out between us. It always gets resolved, often without speaking, while on the trail. In marriage and biking, ride right through the mayhem.

  TRUE LOVE IS THE SMILE THAT SMILES BACK

  Just like our plant-growing experiment, when it comes to love, talking—even yelling—helps you grow stronger. Whether it’s “I love you, love you, love you,” or “I hate your fucking guts right now,” as long as the words are honest and from the heart, you are growing together. When it comes to plants and love, take time, pay attention, and pour out your heart, in words, every day, with affection and/or anger. As long as those vocal vibrations are happening, the relationship will grow.

  The best part of my romance with Jon the band geek was talking about it with my friends. During my fix-up years with vampire boyfriends, I didn’t speak honestly with them about my feelings—nor did they with me—and it left a lot of bad vibes and wasted energy behind. Kissing a lot of frogs was useful trial and error experimentation, but not for finding a lot of love.

  And then, I met Paul and we did nothing but talk with genuine fascination and honesty, and I finally felt strong in a relationship.

  Chapter Three

  Money

  For the last several years, I’ve been covering the Super Bowl of backyard engineering at a crazy event called Punkin Chunkin. One hundred thousand people come to a cornfield in Delaware and stay up all night to set up their air cannons, centrifugal force machines, trebuchets, and medieval battle-size catapults like something from Game of Thrones that could take down a castle wall. They can hurl pumpkins for a country mile, which is the same as a regular mile but in a cornfield. Most of the competitors aren’t trained engineers. They’re guerrilla engineers, people from all walks of life who are just really, really into it and love both the insane feats of physics and the carnival aspect of the event, the chocolate-covered bacon and pumpkin-shelled beer. Every person is welcoming and happy to be there, and they love talking about their wacky machines. Since I’m a celebrity geek, a lot of them let me pull the lever and send that gourd soaring.

  Another annual event I’ve covered is Large, Dangerous Rocket Ships (LDRS), a competition to see who can launch rockets the highest and farthest.
Some people send up classic rockets. Some launch unpredictable objects, like a coffin, which, at apogee, releases a vampire, or a bride that then spits out a baby. Engineering competitions bring out your crazy, and we need more of that creative crazy in our world.

  Everyone at Chunk and LDRS is steeped in their passion for weird, and I love them for it. They’re just backyard engineers and makers who have a passion for alternative extreme building and have somehow found their tribe of fellow hobbyists. The vast majority of them are not necessarily rich, but spend many thousands of dollars each year on their rigs. Why?

  What Is Money?

  Los Gatos, California, today, is mostly an entitled enclave where Silicon Valley millionaires (and billionaires) live in mansions. On the main street in town, you can shop for three-hundred-dollar tank tops and watch a parade of brand-new BMWs, Mercedes, and Range Rovers crawl by. Back in the ’80s, when I grew up there, it was a free-spirited middle- and upper-middle-class suburb where hippies who made a decent living settled.

  My parents’ friends looked more like bikers or surfers and they all partied like it was 1999. My parents picked Los Gatos to settle and raise a family because the community was tight. Everyone knew everyone. The schools were great and you didn’t have to lock your doors. It was picture-perfect Californian suburbia, and the Byrons were in it for the long haul. Their vision quest was to be forever 95030.

  I was in awe of my father. The one way I tell parents how to get their kids to be interested in science is by being interested yourself. I became a maker by watching my dad in the garage. It must be where I first fell in love with the smell of sawdust. He could have been a professional woodworker with the kind of talent he lent to his hobby. His passion for it fascinated me. He made our Christmas toys, built a beautiful rocking horse, made jewelry boxes, curio cases, furniture, and even the most amazing tree house with a wraparound deck. Working with your hands is an art that I watched and absorbed. It was his way to show us love and I carry that love to my daughter.

  My mother is beautiful, and smart, a Berkeley grad with degrees in anthropology and French. The daughter of a doctor and a nurse, she was intrigued by anything medical, and she seemed to know everything, as if she were WebMD before there was an internet. She should have been a doctor, but after modeling a bit, she had me, and then my sister. She poured all of her left-brain, detail-oriented mind into making grocery lists with maps of the store with a symbol key at the bottom and color coding for sale items. Our shopping runs were strategic, planned, and efficient. She watched every item rung up and kept the checker in line. There were no impulse buys. My sister and I followed behind her cart, marveling at her surgery-like shopping precision. Her coupon box was an accurate filing system, organized by category and expiration date.

  First crash test dummy

  (little sister Summer)

  As successful as my parents were as human beings who embraced love, fun, and the joy in doing, our family’s finances were not always stable. My father, a real estate broker, did well when the economy was robust, and we lived in the mountains in big, pretty houses. When the market crashed, we moved to the “flatlands,” as Dad called it. My sister recently calculated that we moved every two and a half years, but always stayed within the borders of Los Gatos. Our houses never really felt permanent, like we were going to put down roots. But I got used to moving, and each new house was exciting. I would run from room to room checking the place out, and Summer and I took turns choosing bedrooms. Being a manipulative older sister, I always got what I wanted by talking my sister into what her choice should be. Daughter of a Realtor, I guess.

  Dad got it in his head that you had to appear successful to be successful. So, even though we’d moved to a two-bedroom apartment, and Mom was scrimping and saving to stay on budget, Dad went out and bought a Rolls-Royce Shadow to drive clients around in. Mom didn’t talk to him for a very long time after that purchase. He still has that car, and it’s become like the lamp in A Christmas Story, a hated object for everyone but him. In a way, I appreciated the dreamer in him, but I was with Mom on this one: I still can’t stand that stupid car.

  WHAT ROLE SHOULD MONEY PLAY IN LIFE AND IN LOVE?

  During high school, our family finances ebbed to extremes. We lost our house and didn’t have the savings to move to a cheaper one. My parents, sister, our dog Frasier and cat Tiger, and I moved into the guest room of my friend Lara across the street. Not the guesthouse. The guest room.

  Needless to say, the guest room, with four people and two pets, was cramped. I tried to make my own space by living in a closet-size office on a mattress on the floor. It was a tough time. Very demoralizing for my parents, and embarrassingly devoid of privacy for my sister and me in the prime of our angsty teenage years.

  I felt bad for them, for all of us, during our rough patches. My mother’s coping strategy was to buckle down. Her scrimping and coupon clipping took on a frightening desperation. To this day the woman keeps Tupperware in her purse to take leftover anything home for future meals.

  If I made my own money, the hypothesis went, it would take the pressure off my parents and give my sister cash to buy clothes so she could have as much of a normal teenagehood as possible. It was my duty, really, to protect her. I’ve always felt like Summer was my responsibility. When she was born, I even told my parents, “This is my baby. Mine.” I was three and a half, so she was my living doll.

  I took a series of part-time jobs to do it, and got into the romance of being a seventeen-year-old who supported herself, like a girl in an after-school special. I wanted to know that I could do it, and that being okay was within my power to achieve, not only for myself, but for my sister, too.

  Eventually, she moved out of the guest room and in with her best friend. The guest room occupants were now me and my parents (and the pets). The space was unbearably claustrophobic for me. I was dealing with the stress of being a teenager thrust into a bad situation with zero privacy, and my parents’ anxiety on top of my own. It was too much. I had to get out of there and deal with what was happening to our family on my own.

  I told my parents I was staying with friends, packed all my belongings into a single duffel bag, and drove off in my ’80 Oldsmobile Delta Royale, a big ol’ American car. I wound up sleeping in it that night. It seemed easy, so I kept doing it, going to a friend’s house to shower.

  There was no conscious plan to live in the Olds for a month. I was just winging it. At night, I parked behind the bagel store where I had a part-time job. I rigged a stuffed dummy to look like a big dude was sitting in the driver’s seat, then I laid down on the back seat, covered myself in clothes, and went to sleep. It was scary and lonely. I was angry that my life was so chaotic, but, on the other hand, I wasn’t giving in to the bad circumstances I was in because I was doing something about it.

  * * *

  HOW TO RIG A STUFFED DUMMY

  Take Dad’s old thrown-away business suit stuffed with newspapers and old clothes. Add hat. For the face, old glow-in-the-dark skeleton mask. Just enough for someone to back off. No one is going to mess with that big guy in the front seat. Wonder if I drove in the carpool lane with him if I would get pulled over. He was pretty convincing from a distance.

  * * *

  I learned how to barter during this period. At the end of the night I could take all the leftover bagels from the store and trade them to the coffee guy for coffee, to the sandwich guy for sandwiches. Whatever was left, I would try to give to the three homeless people I knew in the park—Joan, Pete, and the Cranky Guy. Pete was somewhat consistently sane. I would sit down next to him on a bench, share my bagels, and he’d tell me stories about Vietnam. Sooner or later he would get agitated and I would leave him to his bottle.

  I wasn’t sleeping well but I needed to be wide-awake at my jobs and to do my homework, so I started taking caffeine pills. One night while driving, fretting and overwhelmed about money, wired and exhausted at the same time, instead of hitting the break as intended, I hit
the gas and crashed into a tree. The Olds was like a tank though, and the tree got dented, not the car. I told my best friend Brittany about it, surprising myself by crying. She said, “Okay, enough. You’re moving in with me and my dad.”

  I had to admit that winging it wasn’t working. Living in my car wasn’t the great adventure I thought it’d be. I mean, it was funny and weird, and I did prove to myself that I could do it, that I was a person who could deal with her problems. But I also realized that my self-preservation instinct caused my driving accident. I was good at wanting to deal with my problems myself, and terrible at letting myself look vulnerable by asking for much-needed help. Self-reliance is the foundation of my money philosophy—still is. But accepting my friend’s offer was an aha moment: I didn’t have to shoulder my parents’ troubles and my own by myself. If I could lean on the people around me, I could get through anything. I gave in to the fact that I wasn’t weaker for asking for help.

  It’s hard to overcome pride. In our Instagram society, no one likes to show the bad, sad parts of life. We only show our best selves. But, sometimes, you are your strongest self when you don’t let pride hide a crushing weakness. #nofilter.

  Before too long, things got better for my parents, sort of. They were able to buy a decrepit, historic little house on a lot with no foundation, and crumbling beams, minimal plumbing and electricity. It was like a cartoon crumbling house, where, if you sat on one side, the whole place leaned. Instead of insulation, newspapers were glued to the wall. It was a goofy little house with two bedrooms, one for my parents, one for my sister and me. I chose to live on the long and narrow sunporch off of the kitchen. We moved the fridge to block the door and give me some privacy. At night, I’d listen to the rats chewing on the floorboards. I would just lie there, listening to the gnawing every night. It sounded like they were everywhere. We tried poisoning them, but one would die in the rafters and smell so bad, you couldn’t use the kitchen for a month. My sister and I found one right in the middle of my room, gasping for air, and it was huge, a foot-long body and a superlong, hairless tail. It seemed like The Secret of NIMH; it was terrifying. To this day, rats wig me out.