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Booster seat

Surprise, surprise: Even in the face of disapproval, she likes her SUV

I've been labeled aggressive, reviled as the archenemy of the environment, called a pig, a bully, and a selfish jerk. What exactly is my crime?

I drive an SUV.

A brand-new shiny one, as a matter of fact, with cp9BIG WHEELS and metal slats across the grille that look like a jungle cat's teeth. Roar! With flared wheel wells and fenders that market researchers tell me suggest the bulging muscles in a clenched jaw.

Can you stand it? My friends can't. Some of them are horrified. One was so scornful when she saw it, she could barely speak to me. I seem to be the latest inductee to the pariah's club, along with such other despised individuals as smokers, public cell phone users, and fur coat wearers.

Other friends are more tactful ("It isn't like you"). And in a way, they are right. It isn't like me. Honest. These are my cars that were like me: A second-hand Cutlass with doors that froze shut on cold days; I kept a blowtorch in the trunk to get them open. A 12-year-old Toyota so low-slung and cramped I needed to be hoisted out when I was pregnant. An economy station wagon. A minivan that was such a rattletrap it was in the shop monthly.

This is the car I'm driving now: A most politically incorrect but very smart sport utility vehicle with heated leather seats and a six-CD changer and mirrors that automatically darken at night to cut glare from cars behind me. A car with a message, according to auto makers' research. But instead of saying "baby on board" like my last two cars, the message of this vehicle is "don't mess with me."

My sudden transformation from mom-mobile chauffeur to road hog surprised even me. I didn't exactly mean to buy the car; I got it by accident, during a monthlong sweep of auto showrooms when my minivan needed to be replaced. As chance would have it, I found myself looking at an SUV at the most dangerous time of the month to be buying a car if you don't really want one: 30 minutes before closing time on the last day of the month, when car dealers are anxious to bargain. With my husband looking on, a pushy salesman engaged me in a bargaining war, and to my surprise and horror, he accepted my low-ball bid. Honest, guys, I didn't mean it!

Of course, Freudians would say there are no such accidents in life, and I'd have to agree. The reality is that a little part of me wanted that car - the middle-aged part of me weary of the station wagon phase of my life, with its connotations of Costco trips and car pools, with practicality etched all over it. The part of me that discerning auto makers have figured out is restless, sybartic, and yearning for a little more adventure.

Then I drove it home, and I was mortified. It was days before I used it again, borrowing my husband's rusty old Toyota instead. The first time I took the SUV to work, I used a distant parking lot, hoping that no one would see me.

Eventually, though, I realized this car was shaping up to be an awfully expensive driveway adornment. I started driving it, and here's my confession: I fell in love with it. It's smooth and snappy and gets me out of tight spots in a hurry. It grips the road on icy days when I press that nifty "snow" button. I like how other drivers and parking attendants are courteous to me.

And it's a great prop for mindless fantasy. Why are men afforded their midlife-crisis cars - their Miatas, their Jaguars - but it's unseemly for women to have them? Behind my tinted windows, on my heated seats with my six CDs consecutively blaring, I can have a secret life like James Thurber's famous daydreamer, Walter Mitty. I can be a pilot. I can be a babe. I can even - heaven forfend - be politically incorrect. But as Thurber said about Mitty, there will be consequences. I will face "the firing squad." I will be "erect and motionless, proud and disdainful . . . inscrutable to the last."