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I'd be hard-pressed to conjure an example of a meeker execution of poor judgment. Perhaps that was the key to avoiding getting grounded for the rest of high school. Maybe my sheer ineptitude was so comical, that my parents decided the resulting humiliation was punishment enough and took pity on me.
It seemed so harmless. I was hanging out with two friends all day. We played video games. We ate pretzels. We enjoyed many rounds of knee hockey in my room, listening to Snoop's “Doggystyle” on repeat. My parents were on a weekend trip to Boston with my sister to tour some potential colleges, but we were the kind of sweet boys who didn't throw parties, so other than some pretzel salt in the family room carpet, they didn't have much to worry about. At least until one of my friends had to go home.
The journey was less than a mile down the same empty residential street we'd both walked dozens of times since I moved there the summer before freshman year. But today, I had a novel idea. Let's drive it. I didn't have my license yet, but I was betting I could make it there and back without anyone noticing. Was this a wise idea? Of course not. Had I ever driven a car before? Of course not. Sweet. Hop in. Our other friend, in all his clairvoyance, chose to stay behind and mind the fort. And as he watched me gingerly serpentine my sister's 1987 Acura Integra up the driveway, I'm confident he relished his decision.
Seasoned drivers have all the proper habits committed to muscle memory: Buckle your seat belt, check your mirrors, place your hands properly on the wheel, look both ways for traffic, and pull away safely. The basics. New drivers, who are unseasoned, and in my case, also unlicenced, might forget one or two. Checking my mirrors, for example.
After finally meandering my way out of the arrow-straight driveway, I set off as the slowest taxi driver of all time. The quarter-mile between my driveway and the drop-off point at the end of the street should take between 20 and 30 seconds to cover in any motor vehicle. This motor vehicle, feather-footed by an exhilarated yet terrified adolescent, topped out at about 10mph which added around 60 seconds. 90 seconds. So much time. Yet none was spent considering whether or not I should gaze into the rearview mirror. When we came to a stop at the end of the street, I finally felt safe to do so.
I couldn't quite make out their facial expressions through the cloud of regret permeating the car, but the people in the car behind definitely looked familiar. It was my parents and sister, patiently waiting for me to pull my head out of my ass and see that they'd been following me the entire time. As it turns out, and as I'd come to understand through the future retellings of this escapade, my friend who stayed behind got to witness the horror of me pulling away at the exact instant my parents turned into the street behind me. Our house was on a corner lot and the approaching road was obscured by trees, so their arrival on the scene was nothing short of instant. My parents tell me they saw a tall figure at the bottom of the driveway make a beeline toward the back of the house to go back inside, no doubt imagining I was about to realize my mistake and stop the car. But I did not. I continued the entire way down our picturesque, tree-lined road, hyper-focused on not going too fast or pulling too far to the other side.
The friend I was chauffeuring, who probably could have walked home faster than I drove, was also no help. He casually looked at the scenery without a care in the world, not once peeking in the side view to see the hunter-green Dodge Caravan tailing three feet from the rear bumper. All he heard when we stopped was a matter-of-fact statement, too calm for the situation: "Aaand my parents are behind us."
That was his cue, and without missing a beat he uttered a "whelp...", opened his door, waved to my parents with a smile, and rushed off down the street to his house, leaving me the sole representative to face the music.
I never got such a good look at the top of a pair of shoes as I did during the 12-foot walk from "my" car to the driver's side window of the minivan behind me. Hands in pockets, eyes darting away, the guilt dripping from every pore, I could only muster a feeble, "Hi."
"We'll see you at home," was all he said. And they were smart. Rather than have my mother or sister get out and take over, they kept the burden of getting the car back home on me. After a mortifying 7-point k-turn, I doubled back toward home, albeit a little faster so I didn't have to spend as much time imagining how deep my trouble was.
I don't know if it was my immediate contrition or the lack of speed and driving skill that illustrated it was obvious I'd never done this before, but my parents allowed the indignity of the situation itself to serve as acting punishment with the addendum that if I ever pulled something like that again, I'd wish I was dead. People usually associate "getting caught" in a negative light, but whenever I look back at situations like this, both in my childhood and in the lives of my kids, getting caught is such a blessing. Because invincibility doesn't exist. Doing the wrong thing, given enough time, will always put us on our ass. I'm just lucky I got caught early and often.
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