(no subject)
So after spending all day yesterday hauling stuff around in a pickup truck, I had this sudden recollection of something I wanted to post about. I grew up in the rural midwest and spent many formative years riding around in trucks with boys. Every other guy I knew owned a pickup, mostly because they're stupidly practical, reasonably inexpensive when you buy them used, and you can do pretty much anything to them and they bounce back, which is an important characteristic in any car driven by a teenage boy. (I actually knew someone who flipped one, twice, and the thing didn't even need to be taken to the shop, but that's another story entirely.)
Most pickup trucks also have this other characteristic that's fundamentally important to most teenage boys - they have a single, reasonably roomy backseat that often lacks seatbelts or has seatbelt buckles that are recessed in the seat, and if you find a pickup with a reasonably wide cabin (that is to say, pretty much all of them), there's enough room back there to stretch out. This is also true of some front seats, but they tend to a) have seatbelts, which are less than optimal if you're lying flat across the seat of a car and b) you only have to hit your head on the steering wheel once before you never want to do it again. Just take my word for it. This will be an important fact in a second.
In pretty much every high school-slash-Texas-slash-whatever else J2 I've ever read, someone owns a truck and making out ensues in the truck bed. I'm mostly okay with this trope, largely because it involves pickups (a relic of my youth that brings me joy even if I would never drive one) and J2. You can't go wrong with pickups and J2, except I kind of want to make this point, because I had the sudden realization in the past year that there are plenty of people in the world who've never ridden in a pickup, let alone spent any length of time in one. They're phenomenally common in certain parts of America (read: the mountain west, Texas, the midwest) and do not show up at all in others. Take this with a grain of salt, because I'm sure somewhere in the world, it happens, but the point is? In my experience, most people do not have sex in pickup truck beds. I'm sure it happens, but most teenagers also don't a) nap there b) lie there c) make out there d) do anything there except ride short distances and haul things. In however many years of being surrounded by desperate teenage couples, I never heard of anyone doing much of anything in the back of a truck. There are a couple of reasons for this.
One? Pickup beds, in the overwhelming vast majority of cases, have ridged floors. I'm pretty sure it has to do with water runoff, though I'm not totally positive, but the ridges are usually a few inches high and speaking from experience? They absolutely fucking suck to sit or lie on. Blankets don't really help because I think it'd take something like a down comforter to negate the grooves. Trying to sleep in the back of a pickup is basically an exercise in "OW FUCK OW." Two? Pickup beds are often used for hauling less than savory things. They tend to be really fucking dirty, and even if they haven't been used for hauling something that's uncomfortable to lie on - mulch, anyone? - they attract mud like nobody's business. Most of the guys I knew dated girls who hated anything involving dirt (I still have no idea about that one - it seems fundamentally weird to pair prissy girls with football quarterbacks and hockey players and farmers and you know, boys who liked nothing more than to fling themselves in dirt and roll around, but who knows) and so there wasn't a lot of lying back there. And the other fundamental reason was that the back seat (or front seat) was, 99% of the time, infinitely preferable. There was a radio! And privacy! And it was plenty big enough, with cushions! So there was plenty going on there, just not in the pickup bed.
In conclusion? Backseat of the Impala: hell yes. Backseat of any and all J2 trucks: absolutely. Back of the truck: not so much as fandom would lead you to believe.
Most pickup trucks also have this other characteristic that's fundamentally important to most teenage boys - they have a single, reasonably roomy backseat that often lacks seatbelts or has seatbelt buckles that are recessed in the seat, and if you find a pickup with a reasonably wide cabin (that is to say, pretty much all of them), there's enough room back there to stretch out. This is also true of some front seats, but they tend to a) have seatbelts, which are less than optimal if you're lying flat across the seat of a car and b) you only have to hit your head on the steering wheel once before you never want to do it again. Just take my word for it. This will be an important fact in a second.
In pretty much every high school-slash-Texas-slash-whatever else J2 I've ever read, someone owns a truck and making out ensues in the truck bed. I'm mostly okay with this trope, largely because it involves pickups (a relic of my youth that brings me joy even if I would never drive one) and J2. You can't go wrong with pickups and J2, except I kind of want to make this point, because I had the sudden realization in the past year that there are plenty of people in the world who've never ridden in a pickup, let alone spent any length of time in one. They're phenomenally common in certain parts of America (read: the mountain west, Texas, the midwest) and do not show up at all in others. Take this with a grain of salt, because I'm sure somewhere in the world, it happens, but the point is? In my experience, most people do not have sex in pickup truck beds. I'm sure it happens, but most teenagers also don't a) nap there b) lie there c) make out there d) do anything there except ride short distances and haul things. In however many years of being surrounded by desperate teenage couples, I never heard of anyone doing much of anything in the back of a truck. There are a couple of reasons for this.
One? Pickup beds, in the overwhelming vast majority of cases, have ridged floors. I'm pretty sure it has to do with water runoff, though I'm not totally positive, but the ridges are usually a few inches high and speaking from experience? They absolutely fucking suck to sit or lie on. Blankets don't really help because I think it'd take something like a down comforter to negate the grooves. Trying to sleep in the back of a pickup is basically an exercise in "OW FUCK OW." Two? Pickup beds are often used for hauling less than savory things. They tend to be really fucking dirty, and even if they haven't been used for hauling something that's uncomfortable to lie on - mulch, anyone? - they attract mud like nobody's business. Most of the guys I knew dated girls who hated anything involving dirt (I still have no idea about that one - it seems fundamentally weird to pair prissy girls with football quarterbacks and hockey players and farmers and you know, boys who liked nothing more than to fling themselves in dirt and roll around, but who knows) and so there wasn't a lot of lying back there. And the other fundamental reason was that the back seat (or front seat) was, 99% of the time, infinitely preferable. There was a radio! And privacy! And it was plenty big enough, with cushions! So there was plenty going on there, just not in the pickup bed.
In conclusion? Backseat of the Impala: hell yes. Backseat of any and all J2 trucks: absolutely. Back of the truck: not so much as fandom would lead you to believe.