COMEDY Poem: The Night I Became Houston’s Youngest Getaway Driver, by Renee Dionne Mies

for my Step-Father

Spanky’s Pizza was ground zero.
Three fishbowl margaritas in,
my mom, my grandma, and my stepdad Tom
looked like extras from The Walking Dead: Tequila Edition.

Their limbs were spaghetti.
Their words were soup.
Grandma mistook a potted plant for a small child.
Tom, eyes crossed and heroic,
handed me the keys.

I was thirteen.
Barely five feet tall.
Absolutely zero business operating a motor vehicle
on a major Texas freeway.

But Tom had been training me.
Gravel lots. Stick shifts.
“Ease off the clutch like you’re sneaking past a sleeping bear,”
he told me,
like Yoda with a hangover and a need for speed.

So I got in.
The Datsun 200SX—silver, cranky,
and shaped like it had unresolved issues with the 1980s.
I turned the key. It coughed.
I shifted. It groaned.
We understood each other.

First gear. Stall.
Try again. Catch it. Go.
Merge onto the freeway
with a car full of humans
who were technically still conscious
but spiritually horizontal.

Grandma tried to sing “Free Bird”
but got distracted by a passing billboard.
Mom hung her head out the window
and gave the asphalt her soul.

Tom navigated like a pirate with a head injury.
“Exit in… two miles? Or half a mile?
Is that a Taco Bell or a hallucination?”

I drove like my middle school reputation was on the line.

Every gear shift, a triumph.
Every honk from another driver, a badge of courage.
The Datsun roared. I grinned.
Houston didn’t deserve me.

We made it home.
Tom gave me a thumbs-up
and then fell asleep face-first in the grass.
Mom and Grandma threw up in stereo—
one on the lawn, one in the flower bed.

And I,
thirteen and undefeated,
parked that car smoother than a valet at a country club,
walked inside,
and finished my pre-algebra like the legend I had become.
Barn Raising
for my father