Tens and Twos: A Sound and Stories "Mistakes Were Made" Tale

A little less than a year ago, my towering, handsome son coerced an employee of the Wisconsin Department of Motor Vehicles into giving him a driver’s license. For him, this was a momentous coming of age moment, and he gleefully accepted the offer to adopt my wife’s old Mitsubishi to drive himself wherever he needed to go. For my wife and I, this event was also a rite of passage, although our version has been much more stressful. Speed, deer, inattentive drivers; cell phone distractions, inexperience on icy roads, and the inarguable fact that teenage boys are impulse-driven monsters who generally make terrible, testosterone-saturated choices.

This apprehension is exacerbated by the memories of every stupid thing I’ve ever done behind the wheel, things I’ve never really talked about, things I’ve certainly never admitted to in front of a room full of strangers. But this is how I intend to appease the gods of the road. The five biggest mistakes I’ve made while driving. If I come clean, perhaps they will see fit to keep my kid safe and citation free. It’s worth a shot.

Number One

Shortly after high school graduation, in the summer of 1998, I, a forensics and band nerd, received an invitation to take a trip with a group of the cool guys from my class. These were athletes and rock stars, so of course I said yes. The plan was to caravan to Somerset, Wisconsin to tube the Apple River, which sounded simple enough until we turned off the interstate to encounter standstill traffic along the highway leading north. We hadn’t realized our trip coincided with Ozzfest, Ozzy Osbourne’s outdoor music festival, which attracted enough heavy metal enthusiasts to choke every road to our destination.

I don’t remember how long we waited on the highway, but patience is not a virtue possessed by many young men. Our group was spread across three vehicles, including my gorgeous 1985 Buick Regal, which is likely what had earned me the invitation in the first place, and before long most of us had hopped out to chase each other around the ditches and cornfields lining the highway. At one point, two of my passengers were seated on the trunk of the Buick as the line of traffic crept forward, and the second I took my foot off the brake, a sheriff’s car swooped in with lights flashing. People riding illegally on vehicles is something St. Croix county’s finest take very seriously.

What I didn’t know was at that exact moment, Mike in the back seat was filling a Coke bottle with Southern Comfort, and when I hit the brakes, he spilled the booze all over the burgundy velour seats. The smell of alcohol overwhelmed us, but we acted fast. I opened all the windows and cranked the air conditioning. Mike and I lit up Swisher Sweets, because it was the 90’s, and we were awesome. I can’t imagine what the deputy thought as he approached the driver’s window with smoke and cold air pouring out, but it worked. He didn’t notice the liquor smell, I only had to cough up a hundred bucks for the people riding illegally on the vehicle citation, and the Apple River was almost as refreshing as the feeling of getting away with something serious.

Number Two

In high school, one of my best friends Matt drove a minivan, and that car was the source of many of my most idiotic vehicular moments. There was the time we filled a laundry basket with water balloons then drove up and down Water Street late one Friday, flinging open the sliding door to soak drunk college kids as they wandered from bar to bar. Perhaps the best story involving Matt’s minivan was the winter night we visited Fairfax Park, because how fun would it be to run around an empty swimming pool blanketed with snow? Matt pulled into the parking lot to discover that not only do they not plow that space, but a Chevy Astro is no match for a thin crust of ice covering a foot of powdery snow. We broke through the top layer and were hopelessly stuck.

No matter—our friend Sarah lived close by. We walked over, sheepishly rang the doorbell, and her stepdad agreed to help. When it became clear that no amount of pushing was going to make any difference, he called a tow truck. Upon arriving, it promptly broke through the ice layer, becoming just as stuck as we were. That’s when we started to worry. The police showed up to grill us about what we were doing at a closed pool in the middle of winter, and while we lied through our teeth about our innocent intentions, the much bigger tow truck they reserve for pulling overturned semis out of freeway ditches arrived to drag the smaller tow truck and then Matt’s van across the parking lot. We never did get the chance to run around the empty pool; it’s an excursion that remains on my bucket list to this day.

Number Three

I hit a kid. It wasn’t my fault, although when running down children, questions of culpability don’t buy you much sympathy. I was traveling down Golf Road when the car in front of me slowed down to take a left turn. I angled my Buick to pass him on the right just the as the kid who was waiting on the corner stepped off the curb. I clipped the youth with my side-view mirror, screeched to a halt, and jumped out of the car to see if he was okay, but he took off running. My guilt prompted me to follow him for most of a block until I paused to see the situation through his eyes. Perhaps chasing him down did not convey the compassion I intended, so I gave up, got back in my car, and continued on to work. I’ve told this story to hundreds of my students over the years, hoping one day to find the kid and offer the apology he deserves. He remains unidentified, likely with a huge bruise still decorating his arm all these years later.

Number Four

Of course, not all my car-related mistakes are story-worthy. There was the time I rear-ended someone heading to Oakwood Mall, and the time I got a ticket for running a stop sign days after receiving my license. I hit someone coming out of my future wife’s driveway, but that one wasn’t totally my fault—it was early in our relationship, we had just been making out in the garage, and the hormones were more intoxicating than any substance I’ve had before or since. I’ve collected a few warnings and citations for speeding. For fun we used to line up shopping carts in front of my car, then push them, twenty, thirty miles per hour, until they hit a curb, which would launch them into the air like an action movie. Just so you know, if you’re doing this on ice and you don’t turn early enough, your car might also slide into the curb, popping your tire and bending your rim. Remind me again why we give licenses to teenagers?

One more of my lovely wife in a car I owned

Five

In college I worked at Scheels, and one morning I had to go in early to help with store inventory. While I counted shoe boxes an ice storm blew in, but that didn’t deter a friend and I from our plans to drive around the country lanes south of town when we were done. Maybe we were out there to enjoy the scenery. Maybe we were partaking in one of the nefarious pastimes college students are known for. Who knows? Either way, I should have known we were in trouble when my Buick failed to make it up one of the hills because of the ice. After backing up and gunning it, we managed to reach the top, where we decided to head back towards town. The ice continued to accumulate as we came down the next hill, when my brakes locked and we slid gently into the ditch. So did the car behind us. Then a police car came over the top of the hill, and he slid into the ditch, too.

While under the effects of the aforementioned college-kid pastime, we helped push the officer out of the ditch, for which he was quite grateful. We waited until a tow truck arrived, and at the time, it never occurred to me how lucky I was. All the dumbass mistakes I made behind the wheel in my youth had only resulted in a few hundred dollars’ worth of traffic citations and auto shop bills. And that poor kid’s arm, but that has to be healed by now.

Kids repeat the mistakes of their parents. That’s the way life works. But perhaps owning up to my own errors will help my son find the same amount of luck I did. Please, gods of the road, please. Protect him. Forgive his transgressions, and help him arrive home safe.