Driving Lessons in the Chevy Titanic

Take one 16-year-old. Tuck her behind the wheel of a car roughly the size of the Titanic, and about as nimble. Toss in a middle-aged lady with perfectionist tendencies and a nervous condition. Now put them all on the jam-packed streets of North-Central New Jersey, and send the kid off on her first driving lesson.

I was that sixteen-year-old. And the middle-aged perfectionist, jumpy as a chilled Chihuahua?

My mother.

Yep. Welcome to Disaster, population-- two.

The car had been my grandpa's-- an early 80s steel Chevy Caprice Classic luxury car in two-tone blue. Its front seat was the relative size of a La-z-Boy sectional sofa. The back seat was so far away, you needed to dial a long distance area code, just to chat with anybody back there.

The hood? Planes would mistakenly try to fly in and land if the hazard lights were on.

Mom insisted this car would be better for lessons than Dad's zippy little Honda Civic because here, she could reach the gas pedal and the brake "if there were problems." Mom was anticipating problems. And that got me nervous.

Then she had me drive to the only somewhat open area our city had to offer. The parking lot of Two Guys Department Store.

Two Guys went out of business not long after this-- nothing to do with my driving, I assure you. But Mom felt the fact that practically no one went there anymore, would assure the safety of the locals, as well as ourselves.

In other words, this was the place I could do the least damage. Her confidence in me was inspiring.

So, in an effort to get my driving mojo going, I popped some tunes into the cassette player-- Chicago's Greatest Hits, as I recall (it just didn't get cooler than "29 or 6 to 4"!... )

(I know, just go with me on this, okay?)

And I took turn after turn around the ol' parking lot.

This went well for a while. I didn't run up over any concrete medians...

I didn't hit any pedestrians exiting Two Guys...

I didn't even wipe out any of the confused seagulls in the parking lot. I mean, we were hours from the shore-- those birds clearly had enough problems of their own without getting flattened by a giant living room on wheels.

And that's when Mom felt it was time for me to take to the Real Streets.

What Real Streets have that parking lots do not, I learned, were stop signs.

And while I did well-grasp the concept of the stop sign and how to approach them, with every stop, my mother aged just a little bit more.

It was that question of confidence again, and what with the Not Having Any. So about 300 yards away from any stop sign, and me going a whopping 15 miles an hour, my dear mother would turn pale and white-knuckled...

And start with the screaming.

"Stop, stop, stop, stop stop stop STOOOPPPPPPP!"

"I see it, I see it, I'm stopping-- fer Pete's sake, Mom!" I'd turn a scowling, blanched face on her.

"Well, I didn't know you saw it! How would I know you saw it?"

This would go on for about an hour or so, until she'd tell me to drive home and-- heart racing, weak-kneed and hands now trembling-- I'd park safely in the driveway and practically fall out of the car in my effort to get away from it.

Grateful to be free of gear shifts and steering wheels and multi-ton death traps.

And stop signs.

Especially stop signs. Even the sight of red made me twitch a little.

Well, needless to say, my desire to drive at all was lessened considerably after just a few lessons. It was probably some kind of Pavlovian response.

See, while Pavlov's dog heard a bell, thought "food," and would drool-- I'd take one look at that blue luxury liner out front, picture icebergs piercing it through, leaving my dad a childless widower... and I'd feel my hands start to sweat.

My last lesson with Mom, thus, became my last lesson for a good reason. This was where that iceberg hit.

We decided to go a more residential route-- one with winding turns to give me some practice. And by this time, I was fully terrified of making any mistakes. I mean, this road had stop signs, yield signs, curves, curbs, bridges...

And my mother--- sitting wide-eyed, stiff-as-a-board and clutching the armrest in case of doom, from the very moment we pulled away the house.

Well, things started out all right. I was, however, afraid to accelerate beyond 15 miles per hour because I felt that at a crazy 20 or 25, I was bound to screw up somehow... And Mom would be shrieking, putting on her flotation device and readying the life boats.

Then I glanced in my rearview and noticed the giant stream of cars behind us.

I was holding everyone up.

"I'm holding everyone up," I said. And, remember, this was New Jersey. Not exactly The Land of Patience and Harmony. So folks were starting to lay on the horn to express a certain amount of displeasure at my keeping them from hot, fresh bagels and bowling and White Castle hamburgers.

So my mother got the bright idea that they'd be a lot more understanding if they just had a better bead on the situation.

In other words, Mom started turning around and mouthing dramatically at them, "She's a student driver, she's a student driver."

Now, I don't exactly know how many of the folks could lip-read, but Mom didn't need to lip-read herself to see just how they felt about student drivers doing 15 miles per hour and keeping them from their Nathan's Franks.

"He just gave me the finger!" she exclaimed with a shocked gasp.

So she went searching in the glovebox for a piece of paper and a pen to write "She's a Student Driver" on it and put it in the window.

She never got the chance.

By this point, I was such a nervous wreck and so flustered from the horns honking, that at a curve where I mean to brake--

I hit the gas.

Up, up, up an embankment we went, right into the middle of someone's lovely green yard.

Finally, my mother had something truly legit to scream about. "Stop, stop, STOP, ohmigod, ohmigod STOP!!" And with that, she wrenched the wheel from me and tamped down hard on my foot as it was going for the brake.

Let's just say we made a serious impression in that person's lawn.

Mom made me drive home that day, but it was very silent in the car. No "25 or 6 to 4"... No "Make Me Smile..." And definitely, definitely not "Feeling Stronger Every Day."

I got out of that driver's seat and I didn't get back in it again until well after college, when I took lessons from AAA. My teacher was surprisingly a very calm woman, who had a sweet disposition and nerves of steel.

It took me three lessons to work out my Pavlovian reaction to stop signs. But I almost never break out in a sweat while driving these days...

Yup-- King of the world, Ma!

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