My first driving experience was much like my first sexual experience I was nervous and clueless, it wasn't as easy as it looked in the movies, and I certainly didn't impress anyone with my skill level the first time out. However, both firsts were very meaningful to me and each will forever hold a sentimental place in my heart. Sparing you the awkward details of a teenage sexual awakening, I will, instead, focus on the absurdity of allowing an adolescent to take the wheel of a two thousand pound metal death trap.
Whereas the romantic notion of expanded personal freedom motivated most of my peers to learn how to drive, my inspiration came from the much less noble flames of jealousy. At the time of my first driving lesson, my parents, sisters and I had just returned home to upstate New York after visiting our extended relatives in the Midwest. It was the end of the summer and I had just celebrated my 14th birthday - the birthday I vowed I would not be outdone by my midwestern cousins.
Originally from Michigan, my parents left the farms of their youth to raise their three daughters, of which I'm the oldest, on the east coast. Throughout my childhood, my nuclear family of five would make our annual pilgrimage to "the old country". Every year, without fail, we piled into the car and drove from our east coast home to America's heartland to visit our extended rellies. And every year, without fail, my cousins managed to find great delight in noting the differences between our vocabulary and accents. Their "pop" had a strong home court advantage and easily defeated my "soda". And, let's be honest, no one outside of the northeast will ever quite comprehend the use of "wicked" as a positive adjective (e.g., "This soda is wicked good!").
Throughout my pre-teen years, any feelings of inadequacy I may have had because of these insignificant differences quickly subsided and my cousins and I spent the majority of my visits bonding over our shared childhood interests: climbing trees, playing in my grandma's barn, sneaking into forbidden rooms, and lying to the grown-ups about doing any of the aforementioned.
In the summer of 1989, as our New York-plated automobile bounded across the Michigan state line, I playfully reviewed the list of clever comebacks I had compiled since the previous year's visit in preparation for my cousins' inevitable comments regarding my regional dialect. Little did I know the game had changed and my cousins were now holding the mother of all teenage trump cards.
They had learned how drive.
Somewhere in the roughly 365-day time span since my last visit, my cousins had coerced my aunties and uncles into letting them take the tractors on my grandmother's farm for a joy ride and had actually become quite good at maneuvering these mechanical beasts around the abandoned crop fields. More importantly, the skills my cousins had acquired on these John Deere goliaths had translated to skills on the much more enviable mode of transportation - cars.
To my time-distorting teenage brain, it seemed to be only a matter of mere seconds before my cousins discovered my lack of driving know-how. Whatever meager accomplishments I had accumulated in my short 14 years on the planet paled in comparison to their driving success stories. No longer did straight A's and babysitting gigs hold any clout. I had officially entered a new era of my life - one in which the cruel scorekeeper of Adolescence would only be doling out points in the arenas of dating and driving. And I was 0 for 2.
Carefully examining my options, I concluded that I had a greater chance of learning how to drive at two years shy of the legal driving age than I did getting a date by summer's end. Taking full advantage of the near perfect hostage conditions that the 14-hour car ride back to upstate New York had to offer, I proceeded to argue my case, describing, ad nauseum, the injustice of being raised in suburbia without a farm to hone my driving skills on. After over a dozen hours of listening to my relentless pleadings, my parents agreed, or rather, surrendered to the idea of giving me my first lesson upon our return home, with the stipulation that I learn on a stick shift.
The daunting task of tackling a manual transmission didn't even register with me. Too caught up with the idea of social redemption, I couldn't be bothered to think about the fact that I could barely walk and chew gum at the same time. The family station wagon wasn't even unpacked before I was dangling the keys to the 1986 Mazda pickup in front of my father's face. In just a short week's time, that Mazda had come to represent all of my hopes and dreams and as I gazed upon its majestic, white beauty, I equated sitting behind the wheel with an increased sense of self-worth.
Roughly an hour later, nestled in the driver's seat, I would realize that the challenge wasn't in sitting behind the wheel, so much as it was in safely putting the truck into motion. After the obligatory parental safety chat, as well as a brief overview of the inner workings of an engine, the practical portion of the tutorial was under way. My father had my undivided attention as he verbally explained the choreography between the left and right feet in their dance across the clutch, brake and gas pedals. Having always possessed strong rote memory skills, I mistakenly believed that being able to regurgitate the sequence of events he had just described to me meant that I could drive like a NASCAR pro.
In an effort to accurately describe the next few moments of what would soon prove to be a truly humbling experience, I will attempt to rattle off the events in as close to real time as possible, in the order they occurred:
Put key in ignition
Pressed down clutch with left foot
Pressed down brake with right foot
Shifted into neutral gear
Turned key
Visualized my dad marveling at how quickly I mastered the art of driving; briefly saw him bragging to his friends about how his oldest daughter was a driving prodigy
Started car
Imagined myself cruising down the road at 55 mph with my impressed friends in tow
Shifted into first gear
Daydreamed about my mom offering my expert driving services to the neighbors and their children
Took right foot off the brake
Fantasized about my cousins being dazzled by my innate ability to safely hug turns at high speeds
Heard my dad mumble something about listening to the purr of the engine while slowly letting up on the clutch applying pressure to the gas.blah, blah, blah
Pictured the governor of New York awarding me with a trophy for being the first 14-year-old to obtain a driver's license in the history of the state
Hit the gas
Popped the clutch
Lurched forward at what I perceived to be warp speed
Heard my father yell, "BRAKE!"
Started sweating
Slammed on brake
Soared forward in the seat
Feared being catapulted out front windshield
Felt seat belt lock across my torso in full restraint mode
Suffered whiplash as we were thrown against seat backs
Came to an abrupt and violent stop
Stalled the car
Wondered if we had died
Started to sob
Noted hands were shaking uncontrollably
Heard my father try comfort me and calm me down
Swore off driving forever
Relinquished the driver's seat to my dad
Once back in the familiar surroundings of the passenger's seat, I became acutely aware of the fact that I wasn't quite ready for driving lessons. I also realized I should have brought tissues. As I sat next to my dad, sopping up snot and tears with my sleeve, I got my first glimpse of a bigger lesson. Although I wasn't able to fully comprehend it in that moment, I would be reminded of it again and again throughout my adolescence and early adulthood. The lesson being that Life isn't about worrying about what everyone else is doing; it's about learning and growing at our own pace, following our own path, and enjoying our own individualized experiences.
Eventually, of course, I would learn how to drive. But it wouldn't be on farm equipment in rural Michigan like it was for my cousins. It would be on quiet back streets and in empty school parking lots in the east coast suburbs. It would be my own, personalized experience and it would be exactly how and when it was meant to be for me. And at that time, I would come prepared with an ample supply of both humility and tissues just in case.