Tag Archives: driver’s test

OH WHAT A TANGLED WEB WE WEAVE

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I want a car more than anything I ever wanted in my entire life. Last month I turned seventeen, and I took the written driver’s test. I was so nervous that I failed the test the first two times I took it. My dad told me that if I didn’t pass the written test this time, I can’t retake it for a year.

I told him I would die if I couldn’t get my driver’s license. Just die. Can you imagine graduating from high school without their driver’s license? The humiliation alone would kill me. Absolutely everyone I know has their driver’s license. And their parents are buying them a new car for graduation. My father said, “you have to get a job and earn money to  pay one half of the cost of the car.” And can you imagine he said I have to get a used car? A used car, I will be devasted if I have to drive around a hoopty.

Girl learning to drive

I’ve made up my mind that I will pass my written driver’s test and my driving test. Whatever it takes. And by that, I mean WHATEVER. I will beg, bribe, or sleep with someone to get my license.

I have agreed to start looking for a part-time job to earn money. I have made a commitment to myself to accomplish this goal. And I will.

I spent the whole weekend studying the driver’s manual. My friend, Gina, ask me all the questions for the written test twenty times. I’m ready. Today I will be taking the written test for the third and last time. I’m stoked.

“Good news, I passed the test. I only had one question wrong. I couldn’t remember the shape of the road sign for Yield. And now I am going to get my mother to teach me how to drive.”

“Get this, my father said he will be the one teaching me to drive. Can I never catch a break? What’s next, water torture?”

Today my father took me out for my first driving lesson in the parking lot of the Mall. Can you say a living nightmare? So, I get behind the wheel, and the seat is so far back that my feet can’t even touch the peddles. Let’s just say that my father is somewhat “softig.” And by that, I mean he looks like he is going to give birth any day now.

First, he says,” Adjust the mirrors, the side mirrors, and the rear-view mirror.”

“I know Dad, I know. I did take driver’s ed.”

“Make sure your seat is adjusted too, Samantha.”

“I did that already, Dad.”

“Don’t roll your eyes at me, young lady.”

After that, I kept my mouth shut, because when my dad says, “don’t roll your eyes at me.” That means he’s not kidding around. And I keep my mouth shut. I just complain in my head.

“Alright, ease your foot off the brake and gently press on the gas pedal.”

I do just that, and the next thing I know, we are shooting forward, and I totally freak out and let go of the steering wheel. My father grabs the wheel and starts screaming at me like a maniac. “Have you lost your mind, never take your hands off the wheel. Are you trying to kill the both of us?”

I begin to silently weep. I have found that my father is very uncomfortable with crying females, and he immediately feels repented. I wipe my eyes repeatedly and then my father looks over at me.

“Alright, alright, stop crying. Take a deep breath. Let’s begin again. Samantha, you must always, always drive with great care. Your life and the other drivers on the road depend on that. A car can become a weapon of death and destruction if we do not learn how to drive responsibly. Our lives and the other driver’s lives on the road depend on responsible driving.”

“Ok, ok, dad I get it. I just freaked out momentarily. I’m a little nervous.”

“Let’s begin again. Take your foot off the brake and depress the gas pedal slowly. Look both ways to the right the left and the rear-view mirror.”

For the next half-hour, my dad has me drive in circles, practice parallel parking. Can you believe it he had two traffic cones in the trunk of the car, god knows where he got those?  Then he had me drive forward and backward.

“That’s it for today, Samantha. Next time we’ll go out on the back roads around town, and you can get some practice in the traffic where the traffic is not as congested as on Route 50 or 40.”

I look over at my dad, and he has sweat dripping down from his forehead. His face is red as a beet. I think he might be having a heart attack or something. “Are you alright, Dad? You look kind of sick.”

“What? Of course, I am. No problem. Let’s change seats.”

“Oh, please, dad, let me drive home.”

“What? NO. I mean not today, honey.”

I moved to the passenger seat; I notice that my dad seems a little unsteady on his feet as he gets out of the car and walks over to the driver’s side. I guess it’s tough getting old.

I start looking at part-time jobs online. I don’t have any work experience except baby-sitting. And god, how I hate taking care of little kids. Absolute torture. “I want this; I want that.” Annoying as hell. I could get a job at the mall, but I would have to take the bus. Taking the bus is so lame, nothing but old and poor people take the bus. What choice do I have? I’ll have to take the bus.

I see there’s an after-school job at the Shop and Stop, which is only about two blocks from my house. I can walk there. The hours are three days a week from 4 until 8 pm. I’ll have to talk to my mother about it. My dad says he wants me to earn money, but he won’t like it if my grades slip.

“Good news, my mom and dad said I can work that job I told you about, but if my grades fall, I’ll have to quit. My grades aren’t great. I can’t really afford my grades dropping, or I might not graduate. And I must get out of high school this year.

Today is my first day on the job. I have to admit I’m a little nervous. Here I go through the Stop and Shop entrance. I see a woman who looks like an employee standing in front of the store. She’s wearing an apron that says Stop and Shop. I walk over to her. “hello, my same is Samantha Miller. I supposed to start working here today.”

“Well, dear, I don’t know nothing about that. Go over to that door that says manager and knock.”

“Ok, thanks.” I knock at the door. It is a very small office. And the man that interviews me is apparently the manager. I don’t remember his name. He is talking on the phone and gestures for me to come in and sit and wait. I do.

After about five minutes, he hangs up.

“Your Samantha, correct?”

“Yes, I’m supposed t start working here today.”

“Well, I think we are going to start you out by teaching you how to restock the shelves. And after you are finished that I’ll have you work with Terri.”

I spent the next four hours stocking shelves. It isn’t hard, but it is boring. But I keep telling myself I will have my car soon. I can’t imagine doing this sort of job for the rest of my life. This makes me start thinking about school and how I need to improve my grades if I want to go to college or some type of technical school after I graduate. I hadn’t really put any thought into it before.

When I get home, I hear my mother calling me from the kitchen.” Samantha, is that you?”

“Yes, Mom, it’s me.”

“How was your first day?”

“Well, it was boring, but I guess it will be worth it. When I get a car.”

“Honey, we all have to work at boring jobs when we first start out and don’t have any experience. When I was in high school, I had a job in a factory where I had to do assembly. I attached one part to another part by soldering it. Over and over again, I thought I would go insane from boredom. But every Friday, when I got my paycheck, it all seemed worth it.”

“Yeah, Mom, you told me that before.”

“Well, I supposed I did, but it’s true none the less. You better get started on your homework. Oh, I put dinner in the oven for you. You’re probably starving.”

“I am starving. What did you make for dinner?”

“Your favorite, lasagna, and, meatballs. I knew you would be hungry.”

“Lasagna, Oh, really, thanks, Mom. You’re the greatest.” I gave my Mom a little hug. And I noticed a tear run down her cheek. It made me realize that sometimes I’m not very nice to her or my dad.

“You go on now, and eat up. I love you, honey.”

“I look at my mom and, I got a lump in my throat. I swallowed it hard. Can’t show weakness. As I turned and walk toward the kitchen, I said really quietly, I love you too. Mom.”

After I eat dinner, I walk into my bathroom and brush my teeth and wash my face and use the toilet. There is no way I’m ever going to use a public toilet and the Stop and Shop. Gross. I go back to my room and open up my laptop and spend about five minutes checking emails. Then I close the laptop and get busy with my homework.  I remember how boring stocking shelves are and how I don’t want to do it for the rest of my life. I make a promise to myself that I will pull up all my grades, even math. I have definitely made the decision today that I want to get Tech training. I’m not sure exactly what I will do, but it won’t be some boring and repetitive job like stocking shelves or cashier.

After I spent a good two hours finishing my homework, I start studying for my history final as I’m reading the history of and the Holocaust. It occurs to me how much I love learning about the past. And how we need to know the past and learn from it. As I’m sitting on the bed, I realize what I really would love doing is teaching. I would love to teach history. I’m going to teach history.

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LESSON LEARNED

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It was 1969, my senior year in high school. I was seventeen but would turn eighteen in May. Everyone else was doing it, had been doing it since they were sixteen. But not me, the other girls in my class told me I was a baby, asked me what I was waiting for?  What was I waiting for?

As my birthday drew closer, I made the decision I would do it. I would learn how to drive. But

Father’s old car

who would teach me, who? Well, the most likely candidate was my father, since he was the only member of my family who owned a car. My mother never learned how to drive. In fact, she seldom went in the car, except to the doctors, or the food store, and she didn’t go often.

My father was not an easy person to talk to. He was prickly like a porcupine, and you never knew what would set him off. He was in one word a grouch! In fact, his nickname in our family was” The Old Bear.”

So, the Sunday morning before my eighteenth birthday, I decided it would be D-day. The day I would ask my father to teach me to drive.

My father made his feelings about women driving no secret. He didn’t think that they should drive, could drive, or needed to drive. Up until now my transportation included my feet, my bike, and the bus, in that order.

So, as I sat down at the breakfast table after Mass, I cleared my throat and took a deep breath. My father was engrossed in reading the Sunday paper. He did not encourage talking at meals.

Nor did he encourage conversation, or other points of view. I had asked my mother’s opinion about talking to my father about driving. She said, “well I don’t know Susie you know how your father feels about girls driving. But I guess it can’t hurt to ask.

So, I did. “Dad, would you teach me to drive? You know I’ll be graduating from high school this year, and I’ll need to drive back and forth to whatever job I get.”

“Susan, you don’t have a car, so why would you need to learn how to drive?”

“Well, I countered, I can go on the bus back and forth to work, until I save enough money to buy a car. Then I would need to learn how to drive and get my drivers’ license. And then I wouldn’t have to take the bus anymore. I hate taking the bus. “ I said this all in one breath.

This wasn’t the best argument because my father worked for PTC. That was the Philadelphia Transportation Company; in other words, the Philadelphia bus company. He had been a trolley driver first, and then he was the head dispatcher for over thirty years. In other words, his life was all about the bus.

“You know Susie, if you are able to save enough money to buy a car, then you have to get insurance, in case you get in a car accident, did you know that?”

I had a very vague idea about that, from talking to some of my friends at school. “Dad I will get a job now, and start saving so by the time I graduate, I will have enough money to buy a car.” I had no idea if this was possible, or even where to buy a car, or how much it would cost. Up until now, the biggest purchase I had made was a movie ticket.

Just then my mother said,” Harry teach her to drive; she’ll need to learn at some point, why not now, before she graduates?”

I stared at my mother.I couldn’t believe she spoke up to my father. It was really unheard of. He rarely asked or wanted her opinion or anyone else’s. My father looks from my mother to me, and then with a loud sigh, he said, “OK, OK next Saturday, we’ll give it a try.”

Saturday arrived, and I was filled with excitement and trepidation. As I was finishing breakfast my father said, “all right, Susan get in the car, we’re going over to the Sears parking lot at the Moorestown Mall, and you will practice.”

As we pulled into the parking lot, my father said,” whatever I tell you to do, do it, nothing else.” We switched places in the front seat. My father explained how to sit properly in the seat, how to check the position of the mirrors, the signals, the gas pedal, and, most importantly, the brake.

“Susan, we’re just going to go from point A to B. Then, you will depress the brake, when I tell you, show me which is the gas pedal, which is the brake.” I was nervous and started biting my nails.

Off we went back and forth, back and forth, for about fifteen minutes. “OK Susan, now I want you to start turning the wheel, you’re going to drive in a circle.” I started to do that, although I didn’t make a perfect circle.

My father started yelling, louder and louder, “slow down, slow down, you’re going too fast. The louder he yelled the more nervous I got. I forgot which pedal was which. He told me to stop and,  I hit the gas pedal hard by mistake. We started heading toward a little building, Sear’s Auto Parts.

My father’s yelling got me so flustered I smashed right into a pile of car tires next to the side entrance of the building. Which was lucky for us, because otherwise I would have hit the building itself.

I let go of the wheel, and the gas pedal, and that is when we stopped, and my father reached over and hit me on my arm as hard as he could. That was the end of the driving lessons.  Without looking directly at me, my father said, “Get out of the car Susan.”

I got out, I was pretty shaken up, between the yelling, crashing into the tires, and then getting smacked. I could only remember my father hitting one other time, so I knew he was really, really mad.

I thought he was just going to drive away and leave me, but he said, Get in the back!”

After that, I asked my sister Betty to teach me to drive. She said she would. Even though she was married and had four kids. She found the time to teach me and take me to get my driver’s license test. The day I passed the test, I told my dad. And he just shook his head and said, “just what the world needs another woman behind the wheel.”