Driving class rite of passage for parents

It’s been two years since we gathered for parent night at the driving school, a rite of passage as momentous for us adults as it was for the children we were handing over to the road.

Both the parents and the teen-agers felt the significance of the moment, but for dramatically different reasons. Unlike our crop of fledgling motorists, who couldn’t wait to experience the dizzy release that comes with sitting behind the wheel, we parents attended this graduation with a sense of trepidation that no doubt equaled that youthful excitement. Knowing the perils out there, we whispered to one another, didn’t it seem a bit irresponsible for parents to so willingly throw their precious progeny in with all the mindless menaces and assorted screwballs clogging the highways? Sure, it was going to be nice to ease up on our chauffeur duties after years of shuttling our young socialites all over town. And yes, we all agreed, there was a certain satisfaction in having ushered our children successfully to this critical juncture in their lives, this threshold of adulthood that had arrived long before we expected it.

Yet none of us that night could shake the image of those soon-to-be-drivers as they emerged from that first day of class two weeks earlier. We parents stared at the excited faces pouring out of that building, astonished at how young they looked. No matter what their birth certificates said, they were still kids to us, giggling and bashing one another with book bags. Not a parent among us wanted to imagine these youngsters hurtling down the road at 65 miles an hour.

“You probably can’t believe you’re here tonight, can you?” asked the driving instructor. “Seems like only yesterday you were changing their diapers.”

Amen, we all said silently as we squirmed in our chairs. And as we left that evening, I chatted with a couple who had gone through this five years earlier with their first child. They were now preparing their third kid for the road. I asked these veterans if it ever got easier.

“Never,” said the mother. “You just have to go through it.”

I was reminded of that comment when my second child recently became a driver-in-training. Although I’m fully prepared to begin round two – as if parents really had a choice in the matter – I’d like to think my daughter had her eyes and ears wide open in the back seat when we went through this grueling ritual with her brother. It would be beneficial, for example, if she recalled how often I had to tell her brother that driving on the shoulder really was not as safe as it seemed, especially with those mailboxes whizzing by and threatening to clip off the passenger-side mirror.

I hope, too, that she heard my lectures about the dangers of speed and alcohol, how that stuff called black ice got its name and treacherous reputation, and why trying to hurry a nervous elderly driver going 30 in a 55 zone by honking your horn is not only terribly rude but will only make the poor guy slow down to 10. It would be helpful if she was paying attention when I reminded her brother that while a blaring radio is not essential in learning to drive, turn signals are always a necessity, even if half the population refuses to use them. I hope, too, that my daughter understood when I told her brother that driving defensively meant trusting no one on the road to do the smart thing every time, that people actually do pass dangerously on the right, that prudently offering help to others in need is good for the soul, and that accidents almost always come as a complete surprise.

And if she retained nothing else from her brother’s training, I’m confident she’ll remember how I urged him to relax, to be patient, to give it time. After all, that was the very same advice I gave her only last month – or so it seems – when she was first learning how to ride her new bike.