Peggy's Prompt --Learning to Drive

Prompt—Learning to Drive

My eighty-three year old friend Bea is not much of a driver. Never has been. She didn’t drive at all until her mid-30’s, having grown up in New York City where she could walk or take public transportation everywhere. When she married and moved to D.C., she had a baby right away and was a make-a-home-and-raise-the-children kind of wife for a number of years. It was only when the first child went to kindergarten and she needed to participate in the mothers’ carpool that she learned to drive—at least well enough to pass whatever driver test was in effect at the time. She told me that a relative of her husband taught her to drive—probably because her husband had the good sense not to play driving instructor to the mother of his children.
Anyhow, she learned to drive well enough to go from place to place around the suburbs of DC, rarely venturing onto a major highway or tackling long distances. Any time she and her husband were in the car together, he drove. Bea told me once that he even parked her car in the garage for her. She would leave the car at the end of their steep driveway for him to come and put the car to bed.
Fast forward nearly fifty years. Husband dies, Bea moves to Asheville, where I meet her at a writing class held in our teacher’s home. I arrive early and find Bea parked in front of the house, all four wheels on the asphalt. I pull in behind her, parking over on the grass at the edge of the road, leaving just two wheels on the asphalt.
I get out of my car and pass by Bea’s window on my way into the house. Hi, I say to the sweet-faced newcomer to the writing group. You might want to pull over a little farther off the road. A school bus comes along this road and the road isn’t very wide. Oh, she said. I wait to walk with her into the house. I watch her start her car, put it in reverse, then switch to forward, then sloooooowly pull forward about a foot, cut the wheels the least possible amount, put the car back into reverse and inch back into her parking spot, moving the car at least two inches off the road. Looks good, I say and she smiles as she gets out of the car. Mission accomplished.
That was the beginning of the Bea Driving Stories. Have you ever gotten behind her leaving class? My friend Cece asked. She must go about 5 mph. Well, there ARE curves, I said, rising to Bea’s defense. Cece just stared at me with that “you’ve got to be kidding” look.
Bea herself told stories about how slow she drove. Her gated community had a meeting about how to slow the traffic in their neighborhood, and the chairman noted that Bea was the only resident who observed the 15 mph speed limit. She probably never even reached it.
Time passes again. Bea has some health problems and doesn’t drive for some months. Apparently family members approach her about giving up her car, which she was determined not to do. But her license was expiring and being over eighty, she had to pass both a written and a driving test to renew her license. I’m going to take driving lessons, she announced as we were on our way to our weekly lunch together, me driving, of course.
So in due course, Bea took driving lessons from a professional instructor, who taught her all kinds of nifty tricks, like how to back up, how to use the rear-view mirror and other assorted esoterica of everyday driving. It’s amazing, Bea told me. It’s not that hard when you know how.
Then came time for the test, the driving part. Bea flunked. That didn’t faze her a bit. She signed up for another set of driving lessons, from the same guy even. Soon Bea was telling me that she was going to take the driving test again. Her instructor thought he had taught her all he could. What does he think about your chances of passing? I asked. Fifty-fifty, she said with that smile.
This time the Driving God was with her and she passed the test, not with flying colors, but passing just the same. What did your instructor say? I asked. He was surprised, she answered.
So if you’re in Asheville on a side street off the main throughways and you come upon a tiny lady in a large car going 12 mph in a 35 mph speed zone, you might want to turn off and take another route.
Bea’s on the road again.