When I sat behind the wheel of my family's clunky van, a couple of my younger brothers strapped dutifully in the back, I understood from my father’s worried look and my mother’s perpetually expressed concerns that there was a lot more to driving than pushing the accelerator peddle. Back then I had just been granted an “Instructional Permit” (my mother always stressed Instructional) and was charged with fulfilling several hours of supervised driving (my mother always stressed the supervised).
A Permit is a not a license to drive. It is, however, a license for your parents to do some crazy and tyrannical things in the name of safety while you drive. Remember that, boys and girls.
My father started me out on his '03 Ford hatchback, a car I would eventually purchase, by taking me to a deserted parking space and handing me the keys.
The hatchback, affectionately named the Screaming Yellow Zonker, is a manual shift, meaning it is a car designed like a union: easy if you're already initiated, hard if you are just getting started. Sitting to my immediate right was a black stick shift. I'd seen my father fiddle with it, but I hadn't the foggiest idea of its utility. On the floor were three pedals, a forward or accelerator, a stop or brake and a smaller pedal whose purpose was known only to the car itself. We called this third petal the clutch, because it is to be deployed in harrowing circumstances.
Starting a manual car from a standstill is like riding a bull, only the fun doesn't stop after ten seconds. In my experience that first day, a stick shift will react in one of two ways to a stop start. The first is to die with a loud shudder. The second is to move forward with a series of motions that are eerily similar to something Jim Carrey might do.
I don't need to go into too much detail about that first afternoon of driving; the retelling is making me blush and who needs to hear about all that anyway? It'll suffice to say that my father wore a neck brace to work the next day and my backside was pretty sore too.
It was a couple weeks after my first interaction with driving that I found myself in the situation described in the first paragraph of this post. My mother was persuaded to let me drive only after several rounds of heated conversation. My father was ok with letting me drive and I wanted to prove myself. My mother was convinced I would wreck the car and slaughter all the passengers and thought it wise to wait a while. In all fairness, I probably would have killed everyone, had my parents not intervened, but let me tell the story.
My drive down our driveway went something like this:
Me: “OK, so I'm going to turn on the ignition now, OK?”I consider that first trip a major success. The van received only one additional dent, I never smashed a curb, I was actually in control of the car at a few points and, to my knowledge, I was never flipped off.Mother: [Sitting behind me] “Honey?”
Father: “You're good.”
Me: [Starts ignition]. [Adjusts radio channel]. [Releases brake]. [Puts car in reverse].
Mother: [Very calm] “OK, so when you back up, you need to make sure you are watching where you are going, you don't want to smash anything without seeing it first.”
Brother in back: “Actually you don't want to smash anything. Period.”
Mother: [A little agitated] That's enough back there. No backseat driving.
Me: [Chuckles].
Mother: “Honey, maybe he's not ready to drive the family yet.”
Me: [Regrets chuckling]. [Pulls car out of garage and depresses close button on garage door controller]. [Puts car in drive and begins toward main road].
Father: “Blinker.”
Me: [Issues left turn signal].
Mother: “OK. Now take your time here, son. Cars move along this road at sixty miles an hour. If you don't see them coming they might smash into you smelting us all into tiny ball bearings.”
Brother in back: “They might even do that if you do see them coming.”
Everyone else: [Glares at brother in back].
Me: [While everyone is still looking back, pulls forward into traffic]
Too busy to credit: “Wait!” “Did you look both ways?” “Was that a Hummer?” “Easy on the gas!” “You need to tell me before you turn!”
After the ride, my mother used the First Aid kit's epinephrine pen to revive herself and my father offered that he would take the wheel on the return trip.
Despite the setbacks, I had accomplished something. I had driven the family and now had the requisite number of hours to attempt the physical driving test. I was ready.
