B<\/span>eads of sweat had formed on my father\u2019s forehead like condensation.\u00a0 He removed a cloth handkerchief from his breast pocket to blot the moisture – taking extreme care to keep his eyes focused straight ahead.\u00a0 It was 45 degrees outside, but inside this car, it was a pressure cooker.<\/p>\n

My Dad had decided to teach me how to drive – no Driving School class for his precocious daughter – and now that he\u2019d staked his claim to this part of my life, he couldn\u2019t back out when the going got tough.<\/p>\n

I turned 16 on December 3, 1972, when cars were land yachts – especially the Lincoln Continentals my Dad updated every three years to keep up with showboating technology.\u00a0 I learned later that these vehicles had a tendency to lull the driver into a trance-like state while couching down the open road; no noise, and a smooth bounce like Mom rocking the cradle.\u00a0 But for now, I was just figuring out the difference between the brake and accelerator and there was nothing lulling about that.\u00a0 Especially for the guy in the passenger seat, my Dad, whose whole body was acutely concentrated.<\/p>\n

<\/a>Minutes before, Dad had been behind the wheel, driving us from home to the parking lot of corporate giant PepsiCo.\u00a0 On Sundays, the lot was an open expanse of asphalt, free of distracting traffic, pedestrians and other nonsense that could impede the process of teaching me how to drive.\u00a0 I had to understand the mechanics first, Dad said, and then I could go on to bigger and better things. Like roads.<\/p>\n

So here we were, and here was Dad\u2019s handkerchief, emerging once again from his pocket. What had I done this time to make him perspire?\u00a0 Had I mishandled the wheel?\u00a0 Doubtful, since I\u2019d been crewing for years on our sailboat and Dad considered me an exemplary course-holding helmsman.\u00a0 Had I pushed the envelope of the space-time continuum in a hot-rodding attempt to get from Lot 1 to Lot 7 at mach speed?\u00a0 Also doubtful, since I\u2019d been ordered to crawl like a centipede on terrain so boring a speed bump would jazz up the situation.<\/p>\n

Dad\u2019s nervousness, I concluded, could only stem from his anticipation of my going on-road.\u00a0 As an architect, he was trained to consider the physics of objects at motion and at rest in a myriad of situations.\u00a0 Right now, I was convinced, he was considering this object, his car, controlled by me and in motion down the center of Main Street in Port Chester, NY where we must ultimately end up.\u00a0 That was probably messing up his head a bit.<\/p>\n

That, along with the fact that I was not getting any younger.<\/p>\n

Though signs of my advancing age had been apparent for months, maybe even years, learning to drive represented the abrupt end of childhood.\u00a0 I was finally taking control of, if not my destiny, than at least my destination, which to a teen was one and the same.\u00a0 This inevitable severing of apron strings had not been easy on my Dad, who had been looking for any excuse to keep me close for as long as possible. Aside from the curves that had replaced the boyish lines of my body, Dad had witnessed other, less physiological, signs of maturation.\u00a0 My hardly concealed plot to escape home, for example.\u00a0 He had seen me pouring over Frommer\u2019s \u201cLet\u2019s Go, USA\u201d with an intensity that surpassed even my assiduous approach towards schoolwork. I highlighted maps and attraction opening and closing times and the names of charming road joints in bright yellow.\u00a0 I left pages about my fantasy cross-country itinerary strewn about the house.\u00a0\u00a0 I was itching to hit the road – figuratively speaking.\u00a0 My only obstacle was knowing how to drive – and so, most likely, Dad now felt as if he was contributing to my getaway.<\/p>\n

By the time we got to Main Street, the handkerchief was no longer sufficient and Dad had brought forth the Big Gun – his inhaler.\u00a0 An asthmatic, Dad kept this medication at hand, but only used it in times of great stress.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t sure whether to feel guilty or pissed off.\u00a0 How could he have such little faith in me?\u00a0 I later learned that his faith came exponentially with my experience, and today I had none.\u00a0 Zipola.<\/p>\n

Being a good driver is all in the timing – coordinating vision, foot and hand movements to propel a ton of steel down a road.\u00a0 All this while anticipating the moves of others who are doing the same thing at sometimes-unpredictable rates of speed.<\/p>\n

If you have a good teacher, you learn to deal effectively with things coming at you when you least expect it: a car door suddenly opening up into the street, a pedestrian stepping from the curb without looking, or a phone call at two in the morning informing you that while celebrating his 53rd birthday at the Metropolitan Opera your father stopped breathing and died hours later in a New York City hospital.<\/p>\n

If you have a good teacher – and I had the best – you learn that a car is not just a means of conveyance.\u00a0 It is a means of raising a responsible, resourceful, and anticipatory child.\u00a0 And, most importantly and especially for this father and daughter, it was a way to prove trust.\u00a0 Because, despite his dampened handkerchief and asthma inhaler, that day, my father had enough faith in me to sit in the passenger seat while I began my own journey through life. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Being a good driver is all in the timing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-essays"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}