“Dad, I’m going to take the car over to Matt’s.”
I tried to make it a casual statement, but the electricity running through my body made it come out like a question. That morning, a driving test examiner had officially declared I was fit to drive. By myself.
He hesitated, then said, “Ok.” I was out the door. “Bye.”
I stepped out into the cold evening and ran to the car. Snowflakes sparkled yellow through the streetlights, giving the night a touch of magic. The electricity leapt from my fingers to the door handle to the steering wheel to the seat cushion. The keys felt cool and solid in my hand as I slipped them into the ignition. The engine came to life but it had a different sound tonight, alive and responsive.
The snow crunched as I eased the car backward out of the driveway. I turned toward Matt’s. Then, it became real: I was driving. I was an adult.
The plastic dash, the lighted dials, the radio buttons, the leather seats, the metal ball at the end of the stick, they all shared the same smell, a glassy, metallic, slick, soft smell of potency and freedom. If I was not an adolescent boy I would have called it a perfume, but it had the same affect – I was high.
I was not about to squander this sense of maturity. I drove with a care and self-assurance that showed the world that I was competent, an old hand. The test examiner had said so. “Nice going, you passed on the first try.” I even nailed the parallel parking. Anyone I passed, if they looked, would guess from my calm, detached expression that I was much older.
The hours and hours of training had settled into my muscle memory. The car responded to the coordinated actions of my hands, wheel, gas, feet, clutch, stick, brake. I could feel the road through the car, everything responded to my will.
I came to Matt’s place, slowed and turned the wheel. Traffic had cleared the snow from the road but on the driveway there was still about an inch. That was just enough. Friction abandoned me for about eight feet. The tires, pointing in one direction but sliding in another, did not obey my hours and hours of training or my muscle memory. I slid across Matt’s yard and into a four inch maple tree.
The hit was dead center, as if I had placed the car with intent. The test examiner would have been impressed. Matt and his dad heard the sound and came out to look. The grill was pushed into the radiator. There would be no more driving this car tonight.
The electricity had left my body, replaced with a limpness that did not want to move. Dreading the talk, but knowing that this was a now part of the adulthood I had been initiated into, I went inside to call Dad.
“Hi Dad. I’m ok. But I hit a tree.”
With a trace of resignation, but none of the anger I half-expected, he said, “Yeah. When the phone rang, I thought it might be you.”
Steve Sphar is a transplanted mid-westerner living in Sacramento, California. He is a leadership coach and business consultant whose creative expressions include writing poetry and creative non-fiction and playing Irish fiddle. His writing brings the interior of life to the surface where it can breathe. He has previously published work in “The Same” and “The Penwood Review.”
