Loco Parentis: Car Sick

I’m sitting in my own car, in my own hometown, going less than 10 miles an hour — and I’m rigid with terror. My back is as straight as Russell Crowe. My jaw is tauter than Brian Westbrook’s thighs. My right foot is pressing with superhuman force against a spot on the gray carpet analogous to where the brake pedal would be, if only I were in the driver’s seat. But I’m not. My daughter Marcy is.

I’m teaching her to drive.

We got a late start on this. Some kids can’t wait to get behind the wheel of a car. Others — perhaps influenced by mothers who gasp every time a truck passes in the opposite lane, read newspaper accounts of teen auto deaths aloud at breakfast, and, when their husbands are driving, brace both hands against the dashboard on every off-ramp — are in no rush. Left to her own devices, I suspect Marcy, who just turned 18, would have put off getting her driver’s license forever. But my husband Doug (did I mention how fast he takes off-ramps?) got a sudden bee in his bonnet when he realized she would be leaving for college without a vital form of identification, yada yada yada, and decided a crash course was in order.

That’s what he got. On their very first outing, in the time-honored high-school parking lot, in his brand-new PT Cruiser, Marcy slammed into a fire hydrant, resulting in $1,500 in damage to the Cruiser and an incalculable blow to her self-confidence. “I’m never, ever driving that car again!” she sobbed as she ran up to her room.

She got no argument from Doug. Which is why we’re in my car.

Marcy taps the gas gently, and my raggedy old station wagon lurches forward. She glances over at me. I reclench my teeth.

“Dad talks to me more,” she mentions.

I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to do. I learned to drive in a four-door Ford owned by my high school; I was taught by a teacher named Mr. Fischer who rapped my knuckles with a ruler and barked “Loosen up!” when I gripped the steering wheel too hard. Driver’s ed was just another unpleasant course to pass, like biology or chemistry; Mr. Fischer didn’t have anything vested in me, and I sure didn’t in him.

Teaching Marcy is nothing like that. I’m terrified she’ll learn to drive like her father. I’m just as terrified she’ll learn to drive like me (and like my mother before me): an automotive Blanche DuBois, reliant on the kindness of strangers to let me out of the left-turn-only lane at stoplights when I meant to go straight. I’m not really qualified to teach anyone to drive — which makes me wonder whether Mr. Fischer was.

None of this, though, accounts for my mute paralysis as Marcy makes a too-wide right turn, wandering well into the path of oncoming traffic, of which there is none, since we’re in yet another after-hours parking lot.