Part of growing up is leaning how to drive and getting a drivers license. It was a part I wasn't exactly thrilled about, but at the same time I couldn't wait for it to happen. Weird, huh?
Dad let me drive the truck for about 1/2 an hour the day I turned 15. We were on our way home from back east, and I guess he figured the north eastern corner of Arizona was a good place for me to learn since there's nothing there that anyone can run into. Seven months later I was old enough to get my learners permit, but I wasn't in a big hurry to go down and take the test. I was scared I would fail.
My 16th birthday came and went without me getting my license, but over the summer I took drivers ed, and passed, so I finally figured it was time to take the big step. I was nervous the day we went down to the DMV to get my license. I imagined an intricate obstacle course set up to weed out bad drivers that I would have to prove myself on, but to my surprise all I had to do was drive around a few city streets with the examiner sitting on the passenger side of my car. I didn't even have to parallel park! Before you know it, I was getting my picture taken for my very own drivers license. Cool! But the hard part came later.
A few days after getting my license mom let me drive Sharon to school. I negotiated the parent drop of with no problem, slowed way down as we passed the crosswalk filled with little children, and wound my way along the street filled with harried parents trying to get their kids to school on time without running into a anyone. At the end of the street I turned onto a short side street that took me to the main street we needed to get onto to go home. I was doing OK going forward, but I was still a little shaky stopping, and consequently I didn't come to a full stop until the nose of our car was pointing out on the main street. Thank goodness no traffic was coming, but I could see it backed up behind the red light half a block away. I knew I didn't have time to make the turn onto the main street before the cars got to me, and I also knew my car was in their way, so frightened, I changed gears to reverse and hurriedly backed up, right into the car waiting patiently behind me.
I was so mortified! So was mom, actually. She jumped out of the car and rushed around to see how badly I had hurt the car behind us. Thank goodness it had a high, strong bumper, and there didn't seem to be any damage. Our car, on the other hand, had a nice big dent in the rear end which didn't make dad very happy. Thank goodness it wasn't worse. One thing I will say, having a minor fender bender sure made me a more cautious driver, so perhaps it was a good thing. I drove, and backed up, very carefully for months after that, and had no more problems until the day I rear ended the car in front of me.
This time I didn't think it was really my fault. I was coming home down Main Street, just a block or two from our house, when I came up to a big intersection. The light was green, but it was about to change. The car in front of me started to slow down, then sped back up. I was watching the light, and saw it change to yellow just before I reached the crosswalk. I figured I was too close to stop without stepping on the brake and skidding to a halt, so I stepped on the gas to get through the intersection before the light turned red. The car in front of me, though, although she was half way into the intersection, suddenly jerked to a stop, and I ran into her. What a horrible crunching sound it made, and I was sick! I was so scared, so embarrassed, so horrified at what I had done.
This time the police had to be called, and I had to stand there on the road as cars streamed past me, wishing I could just disappear into the pavement. The policeman was very understanding, he had us exchange insurance information and he didn't even give me ticket. I think he felt like there were some extenuating circumstances.
Again, dad wasn't very happy about the damage to our car. He preferred doing the body work himself instead of making an insurance claim that would make our rates go up. I had been driving our family”s orange VW Station wagon, which was the ugliest car you could imagine, but it was perfect for a big family like ours. Dad was able to fix the damage to the front of the car and smooth it out so it didn't look bad, but the paint was a mess. Rather than taking the car in to be professionally painted, dad bought some auto spray paint and painted the car himself. He chose a light flat green paint, kind of a cross between mint, lime, and puke. He did a good job masking off the trim and the windows, and the paint job was great, but it wasn't shiny, and it was so ugly. If I'd thought an orange VW Station wagon was ugly, it was nothing compared to a light green one. And it was my fault.
I also worried about the girl I had rear ended. Dad checked up on her a few weeks after the accident to make sure she was OK. It turned out that her sister took her to the hospital just to make sure everything was OK. They ran tests, and discovered that she had MS. It was no wonder her reflexes had been kind of off just before she jerked to a stop and I ran into her. Her sister assured us that the accident was actually a blessing, since it caused her to see a doctor and he was able to figure out what was wrong. Still, I felt awful about the accident and sure wished I had known how to turn back the clock so I could have avoided it all together.
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