My great-nephew is getting his driver’s license. Strange, isn’t it? That I’m old enough to have a 16-year-old great-nephew? Really, what I meant to say is that it’s strange he was successful so quickly. Well, he didn’t quite make it on his first appointment, but that first driver’s test was cancelled because the examiner had an injury. One would hope it wasn’t sustained while he was conducting a driver’s test.
Back in the day, many of us were required to take our test at least twice. The theory was that it made us more appreciative of the heavy burden of responsibility they were reluctantly bestowing on us. In my case, I failed my first test fair and square, even before I left the parking lot! I didn’t realize the car was parked behind a low cement block which, in my defense, were fairly new at the time. It looked to me like the coast was clear, so I drove right over it. I stopped after the front wheels had cleared the little curb and we sort of looked at each other for a moment before the driving examiner said, “You might as well turn off the ignition.” I left it for him to decide whether to pull forward or backward over the pesky cement thing, but booked my next test while I was walking back through the building. I got my license the following Tuesday.
There was never any doubt for any of us that we would get our license. We were the demographic that had freely ridden our bikes around the city for 10 years before we got our Learner’s Permits. We would ride to the parks with Tupperware popsicles tied to the handlebars, dripping sticky liquid onto our legs. We would ride in our bathing suits to the swimming pool. We would ride for miles to the very first McDonald’s that opened in Calgary. When I was 10, I rode down Crowchild Trail to show my friend my grandma’s attic, the allure of which I’ve written about before.
We knew the freedom that was provided by having our own wheels at the ready, so graduating from two wheels to four was something most of us tried for on the very day we turned 16. There has been a lot of driving since then – to and from work for decades, across provinces on vacations, home from the hospital with my newborn, white knuckling on so very many highways during storms. And after nearly 50 years, I have never had an accident.
Please, oh please, let us be able to say that about my great-nephew in 50 years.
Visit Sandy’s website at LifeInRetirement.ca