Learning to drive!

Let us remember all children and commit ourselves to their growth and safety, their health and education, their uniqueness and their unfolding beauty.
~ Connie Sternberg

Today, on the way home from a parent/teacher conference, my 15-year-old daughter asked if she could drive up the farm lane. She’s only half a year away from her learner’s permit (eek!) and hadn’t been behind the wheel of anything.

More than 20 years ago, I had the pleasure of teaching my youngest brother, twelve years younger than me, how to drive a stick shift. It is a funny story, and it starts all the way back to when I was learning how to drive a stick in my early 20’s. I borrowed (with permission) another brother’s car to drive into town. I’d been riding dirt bikes for years, and understood the concept of shifting, but hadn’t had much practice in cars. My youngest brother was along for the ride, plus my sister, who also didn’t know how to drive stick.

We got to the light in town, and I slipped the clutch a bit too fast. Didn’t know what I’d done, and as we jerked up Main Street, my sister and I laughing hysterically because we had no idea why the car was behaving so bizarrely or what to do to correct it, my brother dove to the floor of the car. This was before seat belts. He shrieked at the top of his lungs, “This is so embarrassing! I’ll never be able to come into town again! Get me out of here!” cowering on the floor.

My sister and I laughed all the harder, which only made him shriek louder, and the circus bucked its way down Main Street until I finally realized I should be shifting into second gear, and the ride magically smoothed out.

When we got home, my brother crawled out of the car, kissed the ground, and vowed never to ride in a car again with me. I was about 24, he was about 12.

Fast forward another four or five years, and he’s driving, and now guess who has the only manual transmission in the family? That’s right, the sister who humiliated him so badly he couldn’t go back into town ever again. He humbly came to me one day, and begged me to let him learn to drive stick in my car. I smirked, and agreed.

My parents lived on the side of a mountain. They lived on a nice back road, the equivalent of the farm lane I live on now, complete with stop signs, curves, and steep hills, all at once, and every 100 yards or so. That long ago trip around the block at the top of that mountain is almost indescribable. If I wasn’t shrieking not to hit the tree, I was cracking up because the car had stalled yet again, or even funnier, was strangely jerking its way up the hill. Sometimes two events at once.

Eventually that afternoon, my brother humbly apologized for that day in town when he dove to the floor and vowed to never ride with me again. He eventually became a skilled driver, unlike my ex who set the parking brake and climbed out of a car rather than risk sliding backward into the car behind him at his first intersection on a hill.

Fast forward another 20 or so years, to this afternoon on my farm lane. This time, it was a minivan, automatic, power brakes, steep hills, sharp curves. No trees, thank goodness. The seatbelt, which I’d wisely put back on after we switched sides, saved me several times from slamming my head into the dashboard or flying through the windshield. Power brakes and panicked 15 year olds are not a healthy mix for passengers, even when they are only going 4 mph! Especially when the handyman roars up the hill in his mud-covered and rather large SUV, laughing like a hyena when he sees who’s behind the wheel in the minivan pulled 15 feet into the field to allow him to pass. Thank goodness they’d just done haying a couple weeks ago. We might have gotten lost in the field…

The “hairpin” 90º curves were a bit hairy, especially because there was one lone tree we had to maneuver around. Accelerating down the steep hill to 8 miles an hour was another occasion to bless my foresight in re-buckling my seatbelt. The cat, calmly watching from across the field was another reason to bless the seatbelts. Thank goodness she hadn’t moved; I might have needed surgery to remove the embedded seatbelt from my belly!

We navigated our way down the 3/10ths of a mile farm lane safe and sound, with only a few thousand miles of life gone from my brake pads, and a dozen or so new grey hairs for mom. My daughter was quite proud that she’d made it without a mishap, and excitedly asked when she could try it next. I took a few deep breaths, and with only a minor quiver in my voice, replied, “Soon, dear. Soon.”