My 15-year-old granddaughter — El-Bell to me, Ellie to most others — jumped for joy when she got her beginner’s permit a few months ago.
She can’t wait to drive without adult supervision. Her 17-year-old sister — The Madster to me, Maddy to her friends — has been happily driving for a year now.
Yikes!
When I was learning to drive more than a half century ago, I didn’t have the same enthusiasm or confidence that my granddaughters do. In fact, I had a deep dread about driving.
But my dad was a farm loan appraiser and in the summer of my 16th birthday, he would basically take me to work — having me drive for what seemed like forever to farms on country roads around north central Indiana.
He liked cars. I did not. I was a skinny, little distance runner who preferred using my feet to get anywhere around my hometown of Kokomo.
Still, I put on loads of miles that summer with my dad — probably a lot more than my friends who also had their beginner’s permit. The trouble was that I didn’t get in much city driving around Kokomo. And when I was old enough to take my driver’s test, it showed.
I knew I wasn’t off to a good start when the lady in charge of the driving part of the exam looked at my dad’s Thunderbird and said, “What’s a young man like you driving a car like this?”
She had a reputation for being a stickler and looked a lot like Margaret Hamilton, who played the Wicked Witch of the West in “The Wizard of Oz.” She was rumored to have flunked at least half the kids on their first attempts, including my buddy Jim. His dad had dropped him off at the license bureau and walked the mile home, assuming that Jim would pass. Nope. He had to walk back to get the car after a mournful phone call from Jim.
So I was already very nervous. Nervous? Sweat was dripping off my hands on the steering wheel.
I started out OK, and even was able to parallel park. But the Wicked Witch informed me that I hadn’t signaled my intentions. Then I stopped a little bit too close to a pedestrian walkway for her liking. But my knockout punch came when she told me I was going to eventually have to turn right while we were on a one-way street .
So I signaled and went from the left lane to the right, not seeing a very faded yellow line between the lanes. “That’s it, buster!” — yes, she actually called me buster. “You’re certainly not ready for a driver’s license.”
I didn’t know which was worse: Telling my dad or fessing up to my friends that I had failed. At least my dad was still at the license bureau and didn’t have to walk back from home to get me and the car.
“She got you on the yellow line, too?” my friend Jim said while shaking his head. “I told you about that. You’ve got to wait until you’re off the bridge before you can get over to the right. She gets everybody on that.”
“I didn’t even see it,” I whined. Seriously, the line was a very, very, very faded line on that one-way street.
I was devastated. A girl I had a crush on was waiting for me to get my driver’s license so I could take her out. She had failed her first attempt, too. Then a few months later, she passed.
She kept asking me when I was going to retake the test. I kept saying soon. But failing the first time had destroyed what little confidence I had and I kept putting it off. At one point, she quit asking me about it. Not long after, she quit talking to me altogether.
Finally, near the end of my junior year — and just before my 17th birthday — I tried again. But this time, I took the test in my mom’s station wagon.
I prayed Mrs. Wicked Witch wouldn’t remember me. She did. “Well, I’m glad you’re in a more suitable car than last time,” she said. “I hope you have improved.”
And off we went. I felt this was do or die for a teen-ager — one of the most pressurized situations I had ever faced. What would happen if I flunked the test a second time?
Thankfully, I passed. Whew! “Much better,” Mrs. Wicked even said. Maybe she wasn’t so wicked after all.
I was now ready to ask that certain girl out on a date, hopefully in my dad’s Thunderbird. “Maybe you should stay with mom’s car,” he said.
Didn’t matter. By that time, she was dating a football player. And to be honest, I think I still liked running better than driving.
Contact Bill at [email protected]