My daughter has been asking for her temp permit for six months. Not casually asking, either — the kind of asking that comes up at dinner, in the car, in the middle of unrelated conversations. Yesterday we finally went and she passed the test. Which means that as of today, she can legally drive as long as there’s an adult in the passenger seat.
That adult is me.
Back to the Beginning
We started at the Bay Village High School parking lot, which is where I learned to drive forty-one years ago. I didn’t plan that as some kind of symbolic gesture. It’s just a big empty lot with good sight lines and nothing expensive to hit. But sitting in the passenger seat of my own car, in the same lot where somebody once sat next to me, was not lost on me.
The first thing we worked on was steering. She grips the wheel high and tight, and when she goes hand over hand, the wheel comes around and clips her knees. Every time. I tried to get her to break the habit — slide the hands, drop them lower, let the wheel come back on its own — but forty-one years of muscle memory is easy to explain and hard to transfer.
Speaking of breaking habits: she also brakes like the pedal owes her money. A couple of times I felt my seatbelt do its job. That’s fine. Everybody starts out either too hard on the brakes or too soft, and too hard is the one I’d pick.
Forty Minutes of Circles
We spent about forty minutes just doing laps. Drive to that end. Now the other end. Now pull in between those two cars. Now do it again. It’s boring on purpose — boring is the whole point of a parking lot. You want the first hundred decisions of someone’s driving life to be low-stakes ones.
When she’d strung together enough clean passes, I figured it was time.
Actual Roads
There are some side streets near the high school that are basically abandoned, so that’s where we went for the last twenty minutes. She learned what a cul-de-sac is, which felt like a small milestone — a word she’s probably heard her whole life and never had a reason to define.
We practiced left and right turns, and yields. Right now every turn she makes is enormously, cartoonishly wide. She swings out like she’s piloting a school bus. That’ll tighten up. Everything tightens up eventually.
She’s nervous. You can see it in her shoulders. And every single time I said something — “watch your speed,” “you’re drifting right,” “check that mirror” — the response was immediate:
“I know, I know.”
I said that too. I said it to my dad in this same town. I remember being certain that I already knew, and being annoyed that anyone would suggest otherwise. Now I’m on the other side of it, and I get it: the “I know” isn’t really about knowing. It’s about not wanting to be bad at something in front of your parent.
So I tried to say less. Not always successfully.
Parked Across from the Old House
We finished by driving through my old neighborhood, the one I grew up in during high school. I had her park directly across the street from my old house. Then we did a quick fire drill — both doors open, run around, swap seats — so I could take the wheel and drive us home.
I don’t know if that moment landed for her the way it landed for me. Probably not. She was thinking about her turns. That’s how it should be.
The Math
One hour down. She needs fifty total before we can even start thinking about a license, plus eight hours with an actual instructor who knows what they’re doing.
Forty-nine hours left. Forty-nine hours of hard brakes and wide turns and “I know, I know.”
I’m going to be honest — I’m not dreading it.
