Driving with Dad

My youngest brother has recently started driving. This seems completely impossible to me, mostly because my youngest brother is perpetually eight-years-old in my mind and I think his time would be better spent watching Blues Clues.

Learning to drive was a terrifying experience for me. When I was five, I got a Barbie car for Christmas. It was pink and fabulous and I was hopelessly spoiled, so of course I got one and it sat near the Christmas tree in my Nanny's basement with a bow attached to the hood. Apparently, when my dear parents purchased the Barbie car, they did not consider my utter lack of coordination. If memory serves correctly, I spent Christmas morning driving the car into everything imaginable. I drove around the basement screaming sliding my hands around the little steering wheel as erratically as possible. I stopped only when I violently drove into something sturdy, such as walls, poles and likely the Christmas tree itself.

Luckily, my dad is a very patient man. He explained the logic behind brakes and soon I understood that Barbie cars could be stopped without running into things and mastered the gas/brake concept. This pedal makes the Barbie car go. This pedal makes it stop. Got it! Put me on the road I'm ready to fly! Unfortunately the steering wheel concept was just too much. He would say turn left, I would turn right. He would say drive over here, I would drive into a tree.

Luckily, my dad is also a very tactical man. He covered the center of the steering wheel with a layer of masking tape and drew a forward facing arrow in the middle with a permanent marker. Once I stepped back into the car, he explained to me in the simplest terms how to steer the car: "Turn the arrow where you want the car to go." Click! I finally understood.

Fast forward ten years, it was time to learn to drive a car not of the Mattel variety. I was just as hopeless as the five-year-old driving into the Christmas tree. I think it took an hour of coaxing and driving lessons to get the car down the driveway. And then he wanted me to drive in the street?! The street is where normal cars drive and people walk. What, was he crazy? Although I wouldn't dare drive over 10 miles per hour, I was certain I would kill everyone.

Luckily, my dad is a very creative man. His methods were a bit... unorthodox. Not exactly out of the Sears driving school manual. I had trouble putting the car in reverse and backing out of the driveway. So, we drove around the block about 100 times--in reverse. His logic? If I can drive around the neighborhood backward, backing out of the driveway should not be problem. I gripped my hands around the steering wheel until my knuckles were white and drove backwards in my neighborhood. But when we got back to the house, I backed out of the driveway like a champ.

Eventually, we moved to an advanced stage. I was required to parallel park in order to pass my driving test. Most instructors set up buckets or some type of disposable barrier on the street to symbolize cars. Not my dad. We drove to the local car lot and I learned to parallel park with actual cars. Definitely more pressure than five-gallon buckets, especially when he explained I better do well because these cars are not ours and they are expensive. I was sure to parallel park with precision.

After we tackled the basics, we drove long distances while Dad offered bits of driving wisdom. Such as:

"If it comes down between you and the animal, you're going to have to take out the animal because you don't want to end up crashing to save a squirrel. But do not hit a large turtle. It will be like running over a bowling ball and you might crash the car and die."

"Never run over a cardboard box in the middle of the road... because there could be a baby in it."

I spent a lot of time driving around avoiding large turtles and wondering why on earth a baby would in a cardboard box in the middle of the road. However, I now don't have any problems backing out of my driveway and can drive my car without an arrow drawn on the steering wheel. Well done, Dad.