Driving Miss Emily
Dec 18th, 2007
I’m sitting in a cafe while waiting for Emily to finish a ballet class. She just finished her first semester at college and she’s spending part of her break here with me in Portland. Ballet is her major and she needed to get to a class tonight at her former ballet studio, located on the opposite side of town. It takes about an hour and a half each way on the bus, so of course, I offer to drive her.
Ideally, Emily could just borrow my car and drive herself over there, but she still doesn’t have her driver’s license. As someone who could barely wait until the DMV office opened on my 16th birthday, I had a hard time understanding how Emily got to be 18 without getting a driver’s license.
Then I tried to teach her myself.
She’s a smart level-headed kid. She seems to be fairly coordinated and to have decent vision. But something about being behind the wheel makes her nervous. The first time we took my car out, after she got her learner’s permit, she did more damage in terms of dollar value than I have ever done to any car in 31 years of driving. Sigh…
I found a nice safe, quiet, empty parking lot to practice. I did not anticipate the damage potential of the curb and trees. We had driven around the lot a few times, when I said, “OK, now pull into that space.” As she did, the car wasn’t aligned just right, and she accidentally floored it rather than hitting the brakes. Wham! My little red VW Beetle went up over the curb and was stopped, luckily, by a tree.
In that split second, nearly $2500 worth of damage was done. (Luckily, insurance covered most of that.) But equally damaged was my feeling of auntly competence. I thought I’d be able to teach Emily how to drive with a few short lessons. Instead, I had screwed up. We should have spent the whole day just starting and stopping until it was more second nature to her.
I insisted we have a second lesson as soon as the car was repaired. It was one of those “get back on the horse” things for me as well as her. We sat in an even bigger parking lot with no curbs or trees inside the perimeter.
She took a deep breath, looked down at the pedals and said, “OK, the right is the brake and the left is the gas pedal?”
Tonight I’m googling driving schools in Portland; it will probably be cheaper.
Image by Chris Campbell via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.
Boy, Jean, next year it will be time to teach Everett to drive. He turns 16 in November. Maybe, after reading about your experience, I will wait till the fields dry up in the spring so I can let him drive with nothing to hit for a half-mile in every direction.
I remember how nervous I was, the first times I drove. Some people never get over that; my own mother believed it would always be like that, so she never pursued her licence. I told her the nervousness would disappear as her confidence increased, but it didn’t matter what I said. She couldn’t handle it.
I’m like you; couldn’t wait to have a licence the minute I turned 16.