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I remember as clearly as
if it had been 30 minutes, not 30 years: The washed out dirt road,
ruts that could swallow a beagle, a station wagon the size of an
armored car, a hysterical stranger to my right.
OK, the stranger was my
mother but she was hard to recognize with her hands over her eyes.
She kept saying something, alternating between a whimper and a
scream so I rarely understood – which was probably just as well.
I failed my driver’s
test twice as a teen, in part because Mom didn’t have the nerve to
let me practice. My grandfather, a retired chauffeur and one of the
most unflappable human beings I have ever known, finally had mercy
on us both and spent a few weeks riding with me after school. One
day he announced I was ready, I took the test, and that was that.
I swore that in the
unlikely event I ever had children I would teach them to drive on a
real road, in a nimbler car, and maintain complete composure. Heck,
everyone would probably have space cars like the Jetsons’ by then,
or maybe just beam from place to place, so driving wouldn’t even be
necessary. But if lessons were still needed, I would be cool.
And I am, sort of. My
daughter, Girl-Child, is 16 and anxious to hit the road. The wagon
has been replaced by an equally tank-like 1988 Volvo, but with
automatic transmission and a turning radius tighter than the space
shuttle’s. We drive on paved roads, my hands are generally folded
in my lap, my eyes stay on the road. I speak in quiet, steady
tones. I am, by most appearances, my grandfather.
Inside I am my mother
but I don’t let her out. This split is a lot like the rest of
parenting; few of us feel truly relaxed until it’s over but you
can’t let it show.
The challenge of
teaching is that it forces you to noodle through the familiar, to
revisit things that are so automatic you hardly think of them. Do
the front wheels belong behind the line when you stop, or is it the
bumper? Exactly how far before a turn should you signal? How much
of a head start must you give pedestrians before nailing them
outside a crosswalk?
Just kidding about the
last one, though I had a high school teacher who illustrated
right-of-way laws by explaining when it was legal to hit someone.
Common sense gets you through the little memory gaps, but what
about rules you know but might not always follow, like signaling
lane changes, coming to a complete stop at intersections, or speed
limits?
It would not be
reasonable to expect my daughter to drive by one set of rules while
I follow another. I have no problem with different standards for
children and adults in general; to the contrary, I get annoyed at
the notion that minors should have, or can even handle, the choices,
rights, and responsibilities of adulthood. However there has to be
a reason for the differences and I just can’t think of one for
traffic safety.
One of the first
decisions I made as a father was to live as I want my children to
live and to be what I want them to be. I am farther from this than
I like, but I could not expect them to keep a clean tongue if I
swore, tune in a game while I send them to church and think they’ll
be devout, or drive like a fool and assume they won’t.
You can’t behave just
for show, either; kids smell hypocrisy. The good news is that if
something is good for your children, it’s probably right for you
too.
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