Learning to Drive: Making the Leap

The process by which David will begin to join the 210 million licensed drivers in the United States began this Wednesday night, an evening that was almost a perfect illustration of the concept of "adolescence."

Virginia mandates that parents and their teens must attend a 90-minute briefing before the teen can be licensed.  The doors to the auditorium locked promptly at 7, and for the next 90 minutes the hair-raising ride began.  David's PE teachers double as the driver's ed teachers, and they alternated with a FCPD officer in providing lectures and videos about driver's ed.  Some of it was helpful, like how the licensure process works in the Commonwealth.  Some of it was scary, such as the statistics about accident rates among male drivers aged 18-19.  And some of it was absolutely heart-rending, such as the video about texting and driving, which related three stories of lives cut down or torn apart.  

I have always had a nightmare in which we open our front door to find a FCPD officer standing there to bring our world crashing down.  I now have to face that over the next few months we will be equipping David to deal with the lunacy of traffic and driving in NoVA, and pray we will do well enough to keep that wolf from our door.  More than once in the evening I felt guilt, over not being an ideal role model for him to copy from; and wistfulness, as the boy whose birth I remember as being just a couple of days ago is now shaving and getting ready to pilot a two-ton vehicle at highway speeds.

It's hard to say what his reaction was to the night: he didn't betray much at the videos.  He hasn't seemed in a rush to study his driver's manual, or indeed to get started on this process.  But in his own way--trying desperately to hide it beneath that teen boy mask of cool--I sensed anticipation, anxiousness to get started, and yes, a respectable amount of intimidation at the prospect of what he's about to undertake and how incredibly bad things can break if they go wrong.  If I read him right, then, I think that's a pretty constructive place to start.

An evening that began with one foot cautiously edging into deeply adult waters--conversations and videos all about responsibilities and consequences--changed when we got home and David wanted to power-down before heading to bed.  His vehicle for doing so? Old reruns of The Kids Next Door.  How very much like a teen: one moment on the verge of adulthood, the next, retreating into the familiar warm confines of childhood.  I had to smile.  We'll have our challenges, getting ready for the next few months and the driving tests still ahead.  But he's still my little boy after all, for one more night.