“Ten and Two, Sarah. Check your mirrors. Foot on the brake. Now, ease it into Drive.”

I officially started Driver's Education last week. So far, we sit in the auditorium at the high school, and Mr. Helmrich lectures us about not chewing gum while driving and how “There are no such things as accidents! Every crash is a direct result of Driver Error!”

I’m going to be a senior this year, and I feel like I’m the only person in this program who’s old enough to get zits. They’re all freshman fifteen-year-olds. I’m a late bloomer, I guess.

Now that I have a Learner’s Permit, Mom decides it’s time for me to drive The Jeep. We haven’t actually driven in Driver's Ed yet, but Mom doesn’t know that. And I don’t volunteer the information. We head towards Crouch’s.

I make the widest left turn you’ve ever seen. The speedometer is seemingly stuck at 24 MPH.

“Go,” she urges me. “You have to at least go the speed limit.”

I start to speed up. And suddenly a police car is right behind me. We may see one police car a week on these back roads. Unbelievable. By this time, Mom has begun to notice that I don’t actually have any driving experience yet.

“Okay. Don’t freak out. Just use your signal and pull off the road up here into this driveway.”

The driveway she chose just so happens to have two large, stone columns on either side of its entrance. I am beyond intimidated and definitely panicking.
I brake.
But not enough. The columns are seconds away from crumpling the front end of The Jeep.

“Sarah! Stop! Stop!”

We come to an abrupt halt in the ditch next to the driveway. The policeman speeds on around us. Mom looks at me.

“I think that’s enough for one day. I’ll take it from here.”

Three Weeks Later

“Check the board for your assigned driving groups. Meet out front at the assigned time and don’t be late! I will leave you.”

And so we are dismissed from our last in-class Driver's Ed session. Next stop: Behind the wheel.

I get grouped with a couple of freshman girls who have known each other for years.

We drive around at the high school at first, getting used to the pedals and mirrors and various knobs. Then, the streets of Nashville. We make backwards figure eights in the Little Nashville Opry parking lot. As I’m making my first loop, I see the light pole in the rearview mirror looming closer and closer.

“StopStopStopStopStop,” I’m begging the car.

“Why don’t you try using the brake instead of talking to it, huh?” my compassionate instructor replies as he applies his handy instructor-side brake.

After a day or so, it’s time to tackle the interstate.

“Accelerate up the ramp, use your signal, check your blind spot, and merge into the interstate traffic going with the flow and speed. NEVER use your brakes on the interstate, understand?” Mr. Helmrich advises as we sit at the stoplight, awaiting my first interstate merge of a lifetime.

The gum he told us never to chew while driving, I am chomping furiously.

Up the ramp we go. -- Not so bad.

Indicate with left turn signal. -- Got it.

Anybody coming? -- Not that I can see.

Begin seamless first-merge onto the highway. – Flawlessly perfor--

 “STOP!” Mr. Helmrich cries out as he slams on the instructor brake.

I turn to look at my instructor, perplexed.

“Tell me you saw that semi,” he says, though it sounds more like a question.

I start to ask, “What semi?” but the behemoth truck in question goes flying past my side mirror, zooming ahead, barreling through the space I was about to fill with this little sedan. The girls in the back are giggling nervously, glad to be alive.

Mr. Helmrich is still looking at me expectantly.

“Umm... It was in my blind spot?” I answer.

Mr. Helmrich’s eyes widen. Is he amused? Amazed? Going to throttle me?

“Sarah,” he begins, but has to take a calming breath before going on.
“Sarah, an entire semi does not disappear in your blind spot!”

He takes another breath.

“Okay. Let’s try this again.”

Nana, Sissy, and I are taking line dancing lessons. Well, we’re taking a lesson. Mike’s Dance Barn is out by Ski World on the way to Bloomington, so you have to be on your way there to get there. You never just end up at Mike’s Dance Barn on accident.

We wear jeans and tennis shoes. We don’t really know any line dances. We don’t even know all the music the live band is playing. We are beginners.

The others in the session are hardcore. Worn, scuffed boots. Blue jeans. Cowboy hats. Giant belt buckles. The men have handlebar mustaches and the women have large permed hair with tall, poofy bangs in the front.

We stand in two rows, facing each other. The man on stage calls out turns and steps and moves and I am beyond lost. I have no idea what I am supposed to be doing, but what I am doing is trying not to get stepped on or throw off anyone else’s groove.

Finally, it’s break time. Nana gives me some cash for the concession stand. Score! I get a soda and some candy and head back to the table where she and Sissy are sitting. The “barn” is set up with a dance floor in the center, the stage at the front. The entrance, bathrooms, and concessions are at the back of the dance floor. Along both sides, long tables with several chairs each line up along the walls next to the windows.

We have homecoming here. We have a winter dance here. And we have line dancing lessons here.

The band plays a note or two, signaling that it is almost time to get back at it. I look at Nana. She looks at me. I am done. Nothing in me has any desire to rejoin the herd, ending up a casualty in the synchronized stampede.

Instead, I make my way out to the car where I have my latest romance novel stashed in my backpack. I no longer care if the lessons last 10 hours straight. I have a book. I climb into The Jeep, stretch out in the backseat, and lose myself. I jump when someone taps on the glass.

It’s been an hour. The sunset a while ago. I’ve been reading by the security light through the car window. Nana and Sissy are sweaty and tired and feel all exhilarated from the dancing. They chatter and bicker good-naturedly all the way home.

Luckily, someone in the car behind us has really bright headlights. I hold up my novel and read by the glow of the low beams.

I guess line dancing isn’t so bad after all. 

“Papaw, what’s this scar for on your belly?”

“That’s where they cut my beans out.”

Each time he leaves his long-sleeved, button-up, always-flannel shirt undone bare-chested, we have this conversation. He’s standing by the window in the kitchen, munching on buttered toast, watching the birds flit and scatter around the birdfeeder out back. It’s chilly. Mornings with Papaw are somehow always chilly. It’s also the weekend. His mailman hours have him out the door by some ungodly, 6am hour every workday morning. But this day has to be a Saturday, or perhaps a Sunday since Nana is running a hot steamy shower in the big bathroom, getting ready for church.

The kitchen smells like coffee and ladybugs. So many ladybugs. At some point, someone trimmed a comic from the newspaper about the ‘bajillion’ ladybugs on the windowsill. Only, in the cartoon, the boy called out, “Dad! Look at the ladybugs!” but our copy is modified, scribbled out and replaced the first word with “Pap!” Our version.

Maybe it’s chilly because it’s fall. Leaves are scattered everywhere. The walnuts have all fallen out of the trees that line the drive, and they crunch and pop under the tires of The Jeep. The Jeep. That’s how we always refer to it. Nana had an accident in The Jeep once, and slid off the road in the ice. She hurt her shoulder and had to kick her way out of the passenger side door. For a long while, she called her shoulder her “broken wing.” She also ran over TJ in The Jeep. He wasn’t hurt too badly. She was backing up, still in the driveway, and she didn’t see him basking in the sunlight, lying on the gravel. He had a bit of a limp after that, but he was a tough dog.

My brother and I had our own version of “Jingle Bells, Batman Smells” that went something like, “Jingle Bells, Papaw Smells” and “The Jeep-mobile lost a wheel and Troy did ballet! Hey!” Clever children.

Chilly morning. Toast. Fallen leaves. This means Papaw will get out on the tractor today and scoop up all of the leaves on a huge tarp, dragging it (and us) along behind him. He makes the biggest leaf pile you’ve ever seen in the Creek. He just dumps them all there. And we just jump in them there.

When lunch time comes, we are a sweaty, dirty, covered in leaf debris and starving
todeath.

Nana brings us macaroni and cheese on Styrofoam plates, which is so bad for the environment but so tasty and creamy and cheesy and we don’t care. We drink purple Kool-Aid from Styrofoam cups too. Kool-Aid, shaken not stirred, in an old milk jug. Milk jugs hold every consumable liquid in the refrigerator. Papaw makes instant Nestle tea with 3 cups of sugar. You have to use warm water to mix it, though, or the sugar won’t dissolve, so he’s sure to pour the last of the old jug into a cup to keep in the refrigerator and sip on until the new jug gets cold.

She brings our lunch out to the club house, or the garage, or the trampoline, or the porch, or wherever we happen to sit still long enough to eat it. Papaw is on the mower now, or maybe still on the tractor, or working on a car in the driveway. She brings him a cup of cold, sweet tea. It may be chilly outside, but he’s always working up a sweat. And she’s always bringing him cups of cold, sweet tea.