I have always hated the idea of the “backseat driver,” and therefore have always done my best to avoid becoming one myself. In a way it’s been easy: since I didn’t get my own driver’s license until relatively late in life (I was nearly thirty) I have always had the sneaking suspicion that everybody drives better than me, and therefore it would be be ridiculous for me of all people to try and critique or improve someone else’s driving. That’s not to say I still don’t do my share of complaining, but instead of being a backseat driver, I am a backseat navigator. When I am a passenger the words most frequently out of my mouth are not “Slow down!” or even “Look out!” but rather, “Where in the hell are you going?” Which, I know, isn’t much better, but still: I believe that it is a difference nonetheless.
Or, at least, it was. Then my daughter turned sixteen and started driving, and those subtle distinctions suddenly went right out the window, along with all of beloved self-restraint and complacence. Because once I had a teenage driver of my own in the family I immediately turned into the world’s biggest cliché of a backseat driver, complete with screams, gasps, groans, and other unhelpful (and probably very annoying) noises of despair.
I can’t help it. Really. Even though every time I get in the car with her I tell myself that this time I am going to zip my lips, the next thing I know we are racing up to a stop sign, and she is looking to the left but there’s a car coming from the right, and it’s a two-way stop but maybe she thinks that it’s a four-way and she doesn’t seem to be slowing down at all, and oh my god, she’s going to drive right in front of them and the next thing I know “STOP! STOP! STOP!” is coming out of my mouth and I’m stomping on the my imaginary brake pedal. And she is looking over at me with complete disdain and saying “I really hate it when you do that.”
But at least she is saying it while we are stopped.
I am happy to say that I am still not this way with other people—like my husband, for example, who does most of the driving when we are in a car together. But then again, I didn’t watch him grow up. I didn’t watch him do things like get into a toy car at age three, immediately run into a tree and then attempt to solve the problem not by backing up and going around the tree, but rather by hitting the gas even harder. This car, by the way, was not a toy Hummer, and the tree in question was no sapling. The result was that the car attempted to climb the tree, at which point Clementine gave it even more gas until the whole thing flipped over. And then when everyone was pulled out, dusted off, and the car was righted, she got in and tried to do it again.
Her cousin, by the way, who was sitting in the passenger seat the whole time, and who voluntarily got back into that same passenger seat again after we had pulled him from the wreckage, was admirably mum during this whole affair. Not even a peep of backseat driving from him, even though the car they were driving was actually his. Perhaps I should learn to take a leaf from his book, and sit stoically through all of Clementine’s attempts to commit vehicular manslaughter on my person.
Of course, come to think of it, he could have just been quiet because he was terrified. Well, that method will work too, I guess.