Prudence Mackintosh

Excerpt from Chapter "Driving Me Crazy"
SNEAKING OUT

"What is a hysterectomy?" the lanky fourteen year old demanded, slamming his book bag on the kitchen table and opening the refrigerator door.

Inured to such abrupt greetings and mildly pleased at the prospect of a substantive conversation with her teenaged son, the mother launched into a full diagram of female plumbing, surgical technique and hormone therapy. "Is that what you wanted to know?" she asked, noting his impatience with the length of her lecture.

"Nope, what I need to know is can you get one? Alan's mother had one last week and he's getting a hardship driver's license Tuesday.”

All three of my boys are licensed drivers and I'm relieved that none of them required me to undergo surgery. There are, however, some hardships inherent in living with beginning drivers. And, as with a hysterectomy, there is a certain irrevocability--a no going back about the whole process.

My initial experiences with a driving child were gentle enough. Jack, the first born, took his Driver's Education course while away at boarding school in Austin. He learned Mopac, Interstate 35, Loop 360 and Ben White Boulevard, long before he knew Central Expressway or Stemmons Freeway in his own hometown, Dallas. He shaved the side mirror off a car backing out of the driveway, was ticketed for doing 40 in a thirty on his way home from the dentist, was sideswiped and rear-ended by classmates at school, but because I never witnessed his learning to drive, never winced at his early uncertain lane changes, I have an unwarranted confidence in his driving ability.

With the second son Drew, whose sixteenth birthday came earlier than most of his classmates, I quickly developed a callous on my right foot from pressing the phantom brakes on the passenger side. My sweaty hand clung to the handrail above the window, and even in the hottest days of summer, even in a linen blouse, I never failed to fasten my seatbelt when I rode with him. He resented my alerting him to stop signs and one way streets, so I settled for sucking air through my teeth each time he ignored one or swiveled his head to the rear and abruptly changed lanes leaving me powerless and alone to assess the changing traffic in front of us. A new driver's impulse is to swerve slightly away from the oncoming traffic, so I learned to steer empathetically with my stiffened body, leaning toward my young driver when the passenger side seemed destined to be shorn away by a truck driver dissatisfied with the reduced right lane space my son offered him.

I willingly left Central Expressway driving instruction to the foolhardy Driver's Ed instructor. When I venture onto that treacherous roadway, I choose the lane I need to be in immediately and do not cut in and out of traffic regardless of the pace. I have read stories about drivers' being armed, and I try not to antagonize anyone, especially those with bumper stickers that oppose gun control or read "Shit Happens."

After driving in Dallas for more than twenty years, I still consider each safe entrance made from the access road in my four cylinder station wagon a divine dispensation. Deciding when to enter the flow of traffic and accelerating accordingly seem to require judgment and experience that I'm still acquiring. I lack the courage to accompany any sixteen year old on his first attempt.

I wasn't always such a coward. In my teenage years when Texas was a more rural state, kids were licensed to drive at fourteen. I don't think that statute was enforced with any regularity in my hometown of Texarkana. Besides, unlaminated paper licenses without pictures were easily altered. My sixth grade boyfriend had been driving a tractor and a truck on a farm since he was eight. By the time we were in the seventh grade, (he was twelve), my parents allowed me to ride regularly with him in his brother's l95l shiny red Ford with the courting knob. Well, he'd had four years of driving experience.

Driver's education is now mandatory in Texas for drivers under the age of eighteen. I'm glad. The newest drivers in my home are the last of the babies who lived dangerously. We wore no seatbelts in their infancy, and I don't recall much restraint in their baby seats other than my swatting their legs every time they tried to climb out. They bounced along beside me in our '65 Chevrolet in unanchored graham cracker- encrusted babyseats that allowed them to see the world, baby seats designed to hurl them headfirst through the windshield in the event of an accident. Only my youngest son born after the stiffer safety laws were enacted has known a consistently cautious and buckled up life. His older brothers frequently remind him, "William, childhood is not what it once was." Irrationally, I believe that their early experiences make them freer spirits behind the wheel and any caution that Driver's Education instilled is on the side of the angels.

The driving school that we selected for Drew cost almost as much as summer camp and didn't last as long. For one hour each evening for three and a half weeks, my son and a gaggle of other gangly fifteen year olds gathered in a hotel meeting room to be lectured on the rules of the road and to view the Department of Public Safety's films on collisions which the boys dubbed "Crispy Critters." Besides the classroom instruction, they did seven cumulative hours of driving in nice automatic Buicks.

Nothing in the Driver's Ed curriculum, however, prepares a teenager for his first experience with government bureaucracy. Not one of the DPS stations is close to our house and the address listed in the phone book for one that seemed closest led us to a vacant store front. By the time we found the proper location, we had lost our early morning advantage
Driver's license bureaus have an Ellis Island quality about them.

Citizenship is not a prerequisite for a license. I heard at least four foreign languages and a variety of American dialects while we inched forward toward the desk. Entire oriental families were on hand to support a shy mother's reluctant foray into the expressway of American life. Middle Eastern men hunkered and gestured on the sidewalk outside while they awaited their turn with the driving inspector. Hispanic babies dressed for the occasion in full Sunday garb patiently dozed in their strollers under the eyes of nervous mothers. Other restless children fought over potato chips and played "You can't git me..." until the young mother in tight jeans in front of me threatened, "Awright, Billy Earl, that’s it, you don't git no school supplies." Only my son exuded confidence.

"Birth certificate?" said the weary clerk without looking up. I groaned audibly. Passing the buck and feigning ignorance, Drew turned to me and said, "Birth certificate, Mom?" This little adventure begun as a birthday treat had now eaten most of my morning . He had never mentioned needing a birth certificate. He turned quickly back to the clerk to avoid the killer laser I trained on him. "Uh, I brought my Mom. She was there and can certify it," he said in his jocular manner that fails him for the first time ever.

We made four trips in all to the license bureau, twice for the written test with and without proper documents and twice for the driving portion. I was comforted on one of those subsequent visits by a mother of a daughter returning for her eighth try. Maybe raising daughters isn't any easier, even if their insurance rates are lower. One woman told me that while riding with her newly licensed daughter, parked cars loomed in their lane. "I was sure that she saw them, " the mother said, " but less than a yard from rear bumper of the parked car, I frantically grabbed the wheel to avoid the collision. 'What were you thinking?' I screamed at her . 'You won't believe this, Mom,' she said, " but I just forgot that I was driving." While Drew was taking the driving test for the first time, I heard enough similar tales to make me think insurance companies should reassess their inequitable actuarial tables for male and female adolescents.

I did observe that females did approach the licensing process with more humility than my son. Cockiness does not go unpunished in government offices. Drew returned in record time from the driving test having been disqualified within blocks of the station for cutting a corner. His misery was compounded when the clerk told him the test could not be administered twice in one day. The birthday boy responded by kicking over one of the chrome standards that roped us in our ubiquitous lines. "Young man," the clerk shouted after him, "Before you control a car, you'd better learn to control that temper."

Later that same day, abetted by his overaccommodating mother and a city street map, Drew located another license station.

This one was bleaker than the first. It was Ellis Island with no chairs or benches for weary parents. Signs instructed us to line up to obtain a form which had been stacked by the door of the previous station. This line took twenty minutes. After filling out the form, we queued twice more, finally taking a number to await the inspecting officer. We had plenty of time to get chummy with the similarly oppressed. "I hate this shee-it, " said the pregnant woman in front of us with the Whoopie Goldberg dreadlocks, "Issa pain in the rear end of my esophagus," she added. We concurred and before we reached the first clerk, Drew and I learned more than we wanted to know about her pregnancy, her boss, her two nervous breakdowns and her intention to dump the baby on her mama because she had too much pressure in her life already. We shared a package of barbecued chips and sat on the curb of the hot sidewalk while we waited for the test. I watched sympathetically as a teenage girl ahead of us returned with eyes brimming, "The tag, Daddy, the front license tag you put on the car this morning expired in March. They won't even let me take the test!" …