High School Underground: The Rolling Dream

Driving. The pinnacle of teenagers dreams. It’s a gateway to freedom, to going places and to road trips, and not relying on rides, but most important of all not getting dropped off in a minivan on your first day of school. In all words the most wonderful thing in the world. In high school it’s generally at the end of freshman year or the beginning of sophomore year that kids start to get their driving permits. For me, since my birthday is in August which puts me younger than everyone else, it’s happening right now. Since the ritual to ascend to licensed driver changes with each generation, it would seem necessary to explain the modern version that must be performed in order to climb to the height of teenage life.

It begins with a test, a simple black and white paper with forty something questions and, if one doesn’t miss more than eight, they get another piece of paper saying they are allowed to drive with an adult after their first lesson. A horribly embarrassing photo also seems to be required when one gets their permit. After one has taken three of these lessons and six months has come and gone they are allowed to take the driving test and either be freeze framed punching the air with joy like the end of a John Hughes movie or throw themselves face down in the gutter and wait three days to retake it.

I took my second driving lesson and will be taking, and hopefully passing, my license test in September after my third lesson. The lessons are two hours long and for the first ten minutes you spend it in the back seat while the student before you jerkily drives back home (See: whiplash). For the first lesson the driving-driving what? Teacher? Agent? Guide? Instructor? The exact title eludes me: the driving (insert one of previous choices) took me into a residential area near New Brighton and asked me if I had had any previous driving experience. I hesitated. I knew what he was expecting: a few practices in empty parking lots, maybe a drive around the neighborhood. So I felt it imprudent to say that I had driven for about four or five hours to Texas with my father when I was thirteen and also the entire way to Sacramento just two months before this.  So I replied with a lame “Just a little bit” and mumbled something made up about wide open country roads.

He said he was a little surprised at how well I was doing as I took him smoothly around the neighborhood.  

For the next two hours after he had given me a few tips we mostly talked about Green Lantern, Captain America, and the new Harry Potter movie, interrupted only occasionally by him telling me whether to go left or right.

My second lesson went pretty similar, driving up and down the beautiful west cliff and practicing backing up along curbs and parking (luckily parallel parking is no longer required on the driving test, otherwise I’d have a problem). Afterwards I scheduled my lesson for late August.

So here I am with only one more lesson to go. Then the driving test and I’ll ascend to the teenage elite, unless they decide to bring back parallel parking, in which case I better get a more comfortable seat for my bike.