Put the pedal to the metal

I have several friends who are embarking on an entirely new phase of their lives; one fraught with emotion, terror and even peril. Almost everyone I know, save a few, have had to reconsider their lives, make significant changes, and bite the bullet even though they are scared to death.

No, I'm not talking about getting divorced. I'm talking about their kids getting drivers' licenses.

Most of these friends have made sure that when their child turns 16, there is a car available for them to drive to school, drive to the store, and drive them home when they have too much to drink at my house. Unfortunately, several of these cars have since been wrecked. I, on the other hand, didn't have my own car until I was 23, and that was a present from my parents after my college graduation. When I turned 16, my parents gave me a sewing machine, presumably on the theory that it had a pedal just like a car, but cost less to insure. This was just one of the many reasons I was vastly unpopular in high school.

Now a days, it seems like everyone in high school over the age of 16 has a car. I suppose this is why I think kids today are too soft. Whatever happened to riding the bus? I grew up having to wait at the end of Eastwood Court, braving the sub-zero temperatures with my legs encased in hideous acid-wash jeans, my bubble-gum pink lips freezing to my braces, trying desperately to avoid any moose-related encounters. You can imagine that I was pretty keen on learning to drive. I begged my parents to teach me to drive. My dad successfully avoided teaching me for several months, based on the lame excuse that the roads were covered in ice and snow and it was going to be at least four months until break-up, which was the Alaskan word for springtime. I eventually pointed out in June that all of the ice was off the roads, and had been for a couple of months. I also mentioned that, despite his concerns, a freak summer snow storm hadn't happened in recorded history in Anchorage. So, my dad gathered all his available courage and took me out in his brown Chevy sedan.

Learning to drive the Chevy was a very difficult task, mainly due to a surprise mystery feature of being required to turn the steering wheel at least five full rotations before the steering column would engage. It was like a scene out of one of those terrible police-oriented TV shows where the driver moves the steering wheel back and forth like a maniac but the car doesn't actually swerve. You just never knew when the car would suddenly catch up with the steering wheel, which caused me some concern.

When my father and I would go out for a leisurely driving lesson, he calmly reminded me of various driving hazards while gripping the door handle with such ferocity that he left permanent hand prints in the pleather. I was a timid driver, and my ultimate driving challenge was making a left turn across two lanes of traffic so that I could go to the local mall to purchase more hideous acid-wash jeans and watch movies featuring Tom Cruise in his cool phase before he went Scientologist and started jumping on couches. I would wait in the middle lane, patiently looking for my opportunity to turn, namely, that moment when there was no visible traffic approaching me within four miles, and which rarely happens during the daylight hours. While I was waiting for my chance, other less cautious drivers would begin to accumulate behind me, and my father, in an effort to be helpful, would gently encourage me to apply my foot to the gas in the form of yelling "GO GO GO GO" at the top of his lungs. Of course I immediately closed my eyes and obliged, blindly spinning the steering wheel and accelerating from 0 to 60 in 1.3 seconds, which was unwise inasmuch as the parking lot had a speed limit of 15 miles per hour.

My mother, God love her, was not any better of a teacher. She spent the entire time I was driving pointing out the window and saying "Curb. Curb. Stop sign. Curb. Pedestrian. Moose," in a calm voice. Also, she was a speed Nazi. If I went half a mile an hour over the speed limit, she'd yell at me. This is somewhat ironic since my father has had to activate the speed alarm on moms BMW in order to prevent her from getting so many speeding tickets that they'll stop fining her and send her straight to the electric chair. But back then, she was a real stickler for the speed limit, and to this day whenever I drive anywhere with her I watch my speed, lest she take away my driving privileges for good.

Finally, I was initiated into the mysterious world of parallel parking. In order to pass my driving test, I had three chances to parallel park the car. So, my dad went out and put a couple of obstacles in the road a car length apart and tried to show me how to wedge the car between them, in an apparent violation of the laws of physics. I carefully pulled up along side the first obstacle, which I think was a trash can, put on my blinker to alert traffic that I was parking, and then began turning the wheel frantically, hoping the car would turn eventually. I then carefully applied my foot to the accelerator, and proceeded to slowly drive over the top of and crush the rear trash can while taking out the front trash can with the bumper of the car.

After approximately 426,330 repeated attempts, I finally managed to park the car without further damaging my fathers trash cans. I was ready. Once my parents decided that I had all the training I was going to get, they took me down to the DMV and I took my road test. I had been preparing for this one moment for the past three years of my life, and I passed with flying colors. It only took me two tries to parallel park, and I didn't injure any pedestrians.

Unfortunately, my excitement was short lived, since I didn't have a car and couldn't very well drive my sewing machine to school. I bargained with my parents to let me drive to school on the occasional Friday, as long as there was not a full moon and the Friday occurred in a month that didn't end in an R. Even after we moved to Oregon, which didn't involve driving in ice and snow, I still didn't have a car. I upgraded my sewing machine to a bike, and rode to my college classes daily through wind, sleet and rain. Only when my brother joined me at Oregon State did I finally have access to a car, which my brother and I fought over incessantly and which I still think proves that he is mom and dad's favorite.

So, once again, my children are probably doomed to not have a car of their own, simply because I didn't have one, dammit. I'm really starting to sound like my father, who used to tell us the age-old story about having to walk to school uphill both ways, barefoot, in the snow, with only his three-ring binder to fight off the pack of wolves which trailed him. But, I suppose sounding like my parents isn't all bad. And, it will save me a lot on insurance.