Wheels
Leave the Teaching to the Professionals
Saturday, March 6, 2010
I had a wonderful friend in high school. I'll call her Janie. Her father was a mechanic who always had a shop full of rescue cars.
Like most teenagers, we didn't pay much attention to Janie's driving. Having access to wheels to leave school at lunch was all that mattered. Janie had learned to drive from her father, though, and nothing passes down bad habits from one generation to the next like a parent teaching a kid to drive.
Occasionally she'd drive a car with a manual transmission. I remember lurching along until she caught second, all the while explaining that she'd never quite gotten the hang of first. On corners, passengers all were put into a centrifuge. This seemed reasonable. To a bunch of idiots.
The one thing I will give her is she always kept her eyes on the road and both hands on the wheel. She never mucked with the radio, or smoked. I also discovered by riding in a car behind her that she kept her left foot on the brake and her right on the accelerator. At all times.
I told her something was wrong with her brakes – the lights had stayed on the entire time. She explained the brakes were fine. Her mother did that so she could be prepared for anything.
Many of her driving idiosyncrasies were best seen from outside her vehicle. One time we drove in tandem to the cottage. As we headed in on the dark highway, I knew she knew the location of the turn. Sure enough, she put on her left indicator at the right moment. We then watched her veer far to the right, as if she was about to drive directly into the black forest. At the last second, she swung sharply left and made the turn. She turned as if she was driving a tractor-trailer, instead of a Vega hatchback.
But with a mechanic for a dad, Janie could always get us a reliable car if we needed one. A trek to the cottage required something a bunch of us would fit in. Her father produced a huge Jeep Wagoneer, replete with wood panelling. With little Janie perched in the driver's seat, hands at 10 and 2, we set off.
Instructions dictated that only she could drive; she mandated breaks that added an hour to the three-hour trip. We didn't care. We were going to the cottage.
Highway 69 was at its nightmarish worst back in 1980. One lane each way, narrow paved shoulder, a heavily travelled part of the Trans-Canada Highway. Huge trucks thundered around the rock cliff bends, sharing space with families hauling trailers, day trippers in sports cars, locals in pickups and everything in between.
Babbling away, we joined this dangerous queue. I suddenly looked up. Heading directly toward us was a tractor-trailer. It had pulled out to pass, and couldn't get back. Before I could open my mouth, Janie expertly took the right shoulder, then popped the Jeep back onto the road behind the truck. We sat in shock as we realized what had happened.
"What?" she said. "I saw him."
While I will forever acknowledge that the best things Janie learned from her father probably saved our lives that day, I still wish no one would teach their offspring to drive.
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