Driving in the Deep End

A few years ago, my brother told me that I wouldn't know what worrying was until I had a kid who was driving. What a worry-wort! Worrying because your kid is starting to drive is like... Well, like... Okay, it's like no other worrying you've ever done is what it's like. Frenziedly panic-stricken doesn't even begin to cover it. Biting your nails to the elbow is a pale shadow of what you do when your 17 yr old son drives off for the first time with the driving instructor. And when you find out that they're not going to stay in the almost-empty parking lot, but are going to go out into an actual neighborhood with actual cars and pedestrians and squirrels running across the road every ten feet! Well, it just lends new meaning to the phrase "crash course", if you ask me. He did it, though, without hitting anything. The only complaint the instructor had was that he drove too slowly.

"The speed limit is 25 mph," the instructor, Joe, said, "But I couldn't get him to go over 20."

"20!" What the hell was he thinking letting him drive that fast in a residential zone? The kid has never driven faster than 15 and that was in our laneway with an old pickup truck, taking out the trash cans. He could have killed someone! Doesn't this jerk know that the speed limit is only the top speed that you can go - not an absolute number that you have to shoot for? As a matter of fact, I think this world would be a much better place if everyone would make an effort to go five miles under the speed limit, especially with my kid on the road.

How different it was when I got my permit and then my license 40 years ago. For one thing, I already knew how to drive. My brother, Johnny, who was ten years older than me, came up with an old 55 Chevy for my younger brother and me to drive on our private road, which was almost a mile long. We were 10 and 8 at the time and had to sit on several pillows and have blocks on the pedals (and there was a clutch pedal too).

If I remember correctly, there was a problem with the gas tank being rusted out, so my resourceful but slightly crazy brother installed a two-gallon can under the hood, and we filled the can with gas by siphoning some from our mother's car. This became problematic when we drove up onto rocks in a field and almost tipped the car over, which spilled gas all over the motor and caused a small fire, which we put out with sand. We were resourceful little brats.

We drove that car up and down the driveway to catch the school bus, through fields and into the woods on old trails and had a heck of a time. Apparently no one worried that we'd kill ourselves, although we often came close to it. I guess the old saying, "What doesn't kill me makes me strong" about covers the experience. It was good practice for my first official driving experience, which occurred when I was 16 and driving with a permit.

In those days, driver's training was just class-time in the school cafeteria, then you got your permit and then you started driving around with a white-knuckled parent. Or, in my case, with your husband-to-be who happened to hunt deer at night for a living, which was illegal. It was a perfect match. He needed a driver so he could shoot out the window and I needed driving practice so I could pass my driving test and get my license. I don't know what kind of experience my friends got driving around the supermarket parking lot with their parents, learning to parallel park in their driveways, and inching carefully along the curb on housing estates, but I got an intensive driving course while my mother was working third shift. (This has a lot to do with why I dropped out of school halfway through my junior year.)

I learned how to corner on dirt roads while going fast enough to elude the game wardens, who drove those old Army surplus jeeps that tip easily. Lenny's 58 Ford cornered way better than they did at 55 mph. I learned to whip into a field, grab the flashlight with one hand and shine it out over the roof, steering with my knees, while shifting into reverse with the other hand so as to be ready just in case a warden showed up. It helped that I was young and foolish and believed Lenny when he told me that the wardens wouldn't do anything to me because of my age. (After 2 years of marriage, I was a lot smarter and left him and our life of crime behind forever.)

When I went for my driver's test, I aced everything except for parallel parking. Even stopping halfway up a steep hill and having to use the clutch to keep the car from rolling back didn't bother me. (I had perfected that little trick while hiding from the wardens halfway up a dune in the Desert of RI.) However, one rarely has to parallel park to shoot deer in fields, so parallel parking plumb evaded me. Luckily for me, I had an examiner who didn't think that should keep me from passing my test and I got my license. To this day, I avoid parallel parking and would rather spend an hour driving around the block to look for a place I can just pull into.

My son is going to do parallel parking when he drives around the downtown area on Sunday during the Folk Festival which attracts thousands of people, most of whom have cars. I've been waking up at night after nightmares of him being crushed by a tour bus filled with Zydeco musicians or Tuvan throat singers or something. Tonight, he's driving down the main street to a busy and poorly laid-out neighboring town where he'll be making left turns against traffic. On Saturday, he'll be driving around the mall area and practicing changing lanes.

I think it's all too much, too soon, this driving on the road before you really have the feel of driving off the road in a safe area. I think I'll talk to his instructor about revamping the lessons and taking it a little easier with our precious teenagers. Maybe, since Maine is so big on hunting, they could combine driver's ed with firearm safety and send the kids out to get a deer and have the wardens chase them to tag it. The ones who make it home without getting "tagged" get their permits and the other ones go out for more practice. It would definitely be safer than the way they're doing it now.

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