The Tall One is sixteen going on seventeen and still getting rides from the parental unit. Because Drivers’ Ed is no longer offered in high school (parents have to pay sizable bucks and enroll them in private lessons), a lot of kids find themselves turning seventeen and eighteen, still strapped into the backseat of the family car.
Recently, I said to my stepson, “Don’t you think it’s time to get your drivers license?”
He shrugged. “Sure. I guess.”
“Well, don’t you want to drive?” I remembered the exhilarating sense of freedom that came with those first set of keys and no one behind the wheel but me.
“I don’t really have anywhere to go.” he said pragmatically.
We didn’t either, I thought. Having somewhere to go really isn’t the point. It’s the simple act of going. My high school pals and I used to drive to the neighborhood 7-11 (otherwise known as Club Sev), loiter around the parking lot with other aimless teenagers, get back in the car, drive around looking for familiar vehicles, return to Club Sev, hang out, pile back in the car and so on and so on. The Husband, who grew up in a small town in Tennessee, had a similar routine. Drive to Sonic, on to the pharmacy, around Town Square and back to Sonic.
Would The Practical Tall One classify this as pointless and unnecessary behavior? Perhaps. Still, The Husband and I agreed that The Tall One shouldn’t miss out on this period of his life, so we signed him up for driving lessons.
Actually, I signed him up.
I stood in line one afternoon with a dozen other mom-types at Austin Driving School, waiting to pay the necessary fees and turn in a mountain of paperwork. A heavy-set woman was conducting all business. She was a loud talker and seemed to be a stickler for the process. I stepped up to her desk.
“You got all the forms filled out?” she said without looking up at me.
“Yep.” I pushed them towards her.
She took a quick look at them. “Right here,” she said. “You need to fill in his birthday.”
Oh shit, I thought. Do I know his birthday? Of course, I do. It’s July third. I wrote it down.
“What year?” she said loud enough that all the other women waiting in line could hear.
I froze. I did not give birth to this child, so I don’t have the date of his delivery imprinted forever in my memory. I tried doing the math in my head. Okay, I know when I was born and I’m twenty years older than him. Or is it twenty-one? (After turning thirty-five, I’ve continued to tell people that I’m thirty-five, which makes my younger sister now older than I am.) So, that would mean that The Tall One…
The woman at the desk stared at me. “What year was he born?” she said again.
Come on. Don’t YOU know? I thought. All the kids who come through here must have been born the same year.
I glanced back at the women standing impatiently behind me. I leaned in towards the woman at the desk. “I don’t know,” I said under my breath. “I’m his stepmom,” I tried to laugh it off, “and so, I don’t actually know…”
She pulled a calculator out of her desk drawer and said, “How old is he?’
“Sixteen,” I whispered. Good God–what a bust! All the other women in line now knew I wasn’t his real mom, but the knock-off version. I felt like a phony.
She punched a bunch of numbers on her big calculator. 1992? Sound right?
“Sure,” I mumbled. “That sounds about right.”
“Three hundred and seventy-five dollars.”
I handed her a check and then left the office without looking at the Mom brigade, who I was sure was snickering and judging me. Back in the car, I thought, sure– knowing the kid’s birthday is important, but what about some of the other stuff that I do know?
Like, how he likes to eat his cereal out of a cup rather than a bowl. That sometimes he has insomnia and writes stories in the middle of the night. That his favorite song to play on his guitar is “Blackbird.” These things are important to know, too, right? So, why do I once again feel like an inadequate stepmom?
I backed out of my parking spot and drove around aimlessly for a while, wondering where I was headed next.
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