This week’s guest blogger is “Howling Mad” Heather, a librarian who’d really rather be a soldier of fortune. She reads philosophy for fun and enjoys classical and heavy metal. She lives somewhere Elvis slept once. She blogs at Prawn and Quartered.
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Dads are supposed to teach you the important things in life. How to cast a fishing line, why regular oil changes are important, where babies come from. To his credit, my dad did teach me all that. He was also the one who taught me how to drive, and the lessons started at an early age.
I was what is now called a “precocious” child, meaning I had the memory and repetitive nature of your average African grey parrot by the age of two. We drove a lot when I was little, and usually Dad was the one behind the wheel. It’s not to say he was a bad driver. He really wasn’t. What he was, was a colorful driver. He used to, and still does, empty the lexicon of profanities and vulgarities when dealing with other drivers. If I’d have known I was dealing with the early 1980s version of Grand Theft Auto at the time, I might have actually thought my dad was kind of hip.
The problem, like some latent disease, didn’t really turn up until much later. My little two-year-old brain, like the parrot’s, would remember things and just spit them out later like word salad. Dad was tolerant and even amused by my babyish echoes of all his choice insults. It was Mom who a) didn’t know about our little lessons and b) was most certainly not amused.
I have no actual memory of the incident in question. It’s the kind of story we seem to break out at every family gathering along with the one about Great-Uncle Ernie and his whoopee cushion at Mass. Nevertheless, I feel as if, in some way, I do remember it.
To hear Mom tell it, it was a perfect sunny day in Southern California, complete with rush-hour traffic. She was just trying to maneuver the big Suburban we had at the time when some idiot in a sports car decided to cut her off. Before she could protest, I spoke for us both.
I’m pretty sure Mom was so shocked she just about crashed the behemoth. “What did you just say?!”
“I said, ‘Get off the road, you old fart,’” I repeated, looking about as smug as a preschooler could.
Mom isn’t without a sense of humor, but on that lovely day, I was taken home, put in my room, and given a Very Special Talk. If I had to guess, I think Dad probably got the same treatment.
It’s been years since I’ve driven in the car with Dad. Now, whenever I do, he’s less likely to swear at random strangers and more likely to remind me to look both ways. I, on the other hand, have a tendency to shake my fists and engage in colorful language when someone dares to cut me off or forgets to use turn signals. I haven’t even gotten a ticket yet, so why stop?
Also, for the record, I still use the phrase “old fart” whenever I can. I am my father’s daughter.
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Driving stories. We all have them. Tell me yours.
The house where I grew up is on an unpaved, rural road, and my dad taught both me and my sister to drive stick shift when we turned 13. His theory was threefold: like a foreign language or a musical instrument, you learn better the younger you start (he probably would have started us at 8 or 10 if we could have seen over the steering wheel AND reached the pedals); he liked the idea of schooling his girls in a semi-scofflaw way (and he could kind of justify it with mom); you just never know when you’re going to need to mooch someone’s car and according to Dad, “Only wusses whine, ‘I can’t drive stick shift'”.
I think I’m going to enlist Dad to teach my son to drive stick shift because no one else I know could be that patient with stall-out after stall-out, popped clutch after popped clutch.
My story is about an old fart and a hearse. No, the old fart was not in the hearse, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if his long lost twin brother was driving it. He was next to it, on the interstate. The hearse was in the passing lane, and in true old fart style, the caddy was next to the hearse, averaging 50 mph in a 70 mph zone. Neither was passing the other and both were blissfully ignorant of the fact that there was no traffic ahead of them for at least a mile and bumper to bumper traffic behind them for… you guessed it, at least a mile. It got so bad, that 18 wheelers were passing them in the breakdown lane. Where’s a highway patrol officer when you need one?
My dad taught me to drive at a young age, also. In fact, I blogged about it about 3 years ago. http://gumballgirl.wordpress.com/2010/03/06/driving-with-dad/
He wasn’t one to swear though – I picked that up later!
Enjoyed reading ur post……I ,too learnt driving but stiff scared to go about in traffic……
I love this Heather! I would think you could have really raised your mom’s hackle with some choicer words. We weren’t even allowed to say butt!
My dad used to drive me to my friend’s house who lived on a cul-du-sac. If it had snowed, he would spin the car around in circles teaching me how to “do donuts!”
Thanks for the opportunity, Leanne! I still laugh whenever I think of this story.
This is great but I am one of the old farts that I used to curse at. 🙂
I love this story!
Dad taught us to drive, too. He had zero, zippity-do-dah patience, but I can’t blame him. Five girls? The four oldest added to his insurance policy on a one-per-year schedule? Not. Our. Fault. He and Mom were the ones who chose to play horizontal polka yielding four girls in four years.
I was the only one with a clean driving record. [Shut up!, Leanne. It’s true.] I even took a hit for the team when my sister backed into a tree limb and broke a brake-light while — erm — enjoying nature with her boyfriend on a back country road. It was after her third one-more-accident-and-I’m-yanking-your-license-young lady. So, I traded cars with her, and managed to get the brake light fixed on my way home from work. No harm. No foul.
Then, one slippery night, I rear-ended another car. We both thought no damage had been done. No need to fess up, right? The next morning (Sunday), Dad had all five of us girls loaded in the car for the drive to Sunday School. He looked at the hood. “Is that a dimple on the hood? Did one of you have an accident?”
Silence. The Sisterhood did not fink.
Dad got out of the car to investigate. He failed to put the car in park. It began to drift forward. Young Sherry (11, maybe?) sat in the middle front seat. “Hit the brake! Hit the brake!”
Yep. You guessed it. She hit the accelerator. The car roared forward and smashed through the closed garage door. Dad got back in the car, shut the door, and backed out of the garage. I think he lost the last remnants of the garage door when we turned from our driveway onto the road.
Silence. All the way to church. Blessed silence.
Too many stories, lots of fingers, asshat yelled out the window and really a lot of tantrums. Het, ya learn.