I drove my first ATV at age 10 or so, on my family’s farm in Ohio. My grandpa had already hoisted me up into the driver’s seat of the towering tractor on an empty stretch of road, so I was an experienced driver. My older, cooler, and more farm-wise cousin mostly steered, as I recall, while I tried not to fall off, but I gave it a shot too. I most recently drove an ATV at a friend’s house in Kansas, with an enthusiastic dog in the backseat attempting to keep his footing, rushing down the hills and taking turns a little bit fast just for the fun of it.
Driving small vehicles like that (or what I prefer, being driven by someone who is a tiny bit too reckless) is a rush. You are rocked back and forth like you’re on a Disneyland ride (my tame Californian-childhood analogue for the wild freedom of the Midwest), and there’s the rushing sound, and you can feel the wind hitting your face, and you’re aware that if you hit a rock or a log or something you’d absolutely go flying.
In an ATV you can go wherever you want. Often, “wherever you want” is limited to “land you own,” but not always—for a couple of days a few weeks ago my fiancé and I became obsessed with the idea of renting an ATV in the Appalachian mountains to see the Hatfield and McCoy trails, driving straight through mud and underbrush, traveling miles to places you can’t access any other way. We didn’t do it, mostly because it cost an arm and a leg to do so, but when we went south to Ohio the surrounding hills felt full of potential. You could drive right up that hill with an ATV.
When I was little, I spent a lot of time poring over American Girl catalogs. At the time, American Girl was considered to be a wholesome alternative to Barbie, though the two seem to have buried the hatchet with American Girl’s limited edition “Classic Barbie” last winter. They’re both Mattel, after all, though parents concerned about Barbie’s exaggerated feminine curves opted for American Girls as looking more like children. The fact that American Girls are Mattel also means that they are in the lineup for another Mattel supermovie, about which almost all the details are unclear so far—but I’m dubious that they could replace 2004’s Samantha: An American Girl Holiday, 2005’s Felicity: An American Girl Adventure, and 2008’s Kit Kittredge: An American Girl.
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