Driving Miss Crazy | Sojourners

Driving Miss Crazy

The terror of driving lessons

There comes a time in every man’s life when he has to begin a sentence with a really bad cliche. This is one of those times. You see, words are not coming easy to me these days. And when I do speak, I seem to be talking in gibberish, running my words together in a strange new dialect:

"YOU’REGOINGTOOFAST!" I’ll say, seemingly at random. Or I’ll blurt out "STAYINYOUROWNLANE!!"

Or even, "WATCHTHECURB!"

And I’m talking louder than I used to, as if I were trying to alert someone far away. An ambulance, perhaps.

It’s just a coincidence, of course, that this only happens when I’m in a car being driven by my 16-year-old. While technically still a child, she has earned the right to drive our 2,500-pound minivan because she passed the District of Columbia’s grueling written test, a test specifically designed to weed out incompetent drivers through the use of such demanding questions as:

  • What is your name?
  • What is your address?
  • Do you have $14?

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Sojourners Magazine May-June 2000
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