Possumblog

Friday

Start typing on the next set of questions. It’s probably the worst type of typing, in that there’s no continuity of thought. Her assignment throughout this silly health class has been simply to answer the questions in each chapter, so typing it all is an exercise in hunt and peck. You can’t get any kind of rhythm going, and you have to keep reformatting the stupid STUPID MS Word paragraph style to make it do what you want.

I suppose there’s a way to make the default different, but I don’t have the patience to set it up. Of course, surely it could take no more patience than starting a new numbered list, return, move the cursor back up a line, enter again, backspace to cover up the number, then highlight and move the paragraphs over. Basically, I just wanted a numbered list--you know, like you’d do on a typewriter. Number, answer. Skip a line, number, answer. As you all know, though, Word tries to think for you and starts indenting and moving stuff, and if you backspace it does other inscrutable things, and it’s a pain. I know there’s a way to make it do what I want it to do all the time, but I just haven’t figured it out. So, that’s that. Typed on that until about 11:30 Friday night.

Up early Saturday, ate breakfast, and got ready for the big drive. You know, it’s really amazing how much you know, that you don’t realize you know, until you start trying to explain it to someone who has no idea what’s going on. Kinda like that whole idea of describing an elephant to a blind man.

First task, the driveway chat. I got Reba to come out with us so she could hear the lecture, too, which prompted Catherine to come outside and sprawl in the backseat with both rear doors open and play her Gameboy.

Why? I don’t know. She’s just like that.

Anyway, we covered the general aspects of a car. Much like her health class, the driver’s ed class was nothing more than taking the tests out of the book, so she had no idea how to adjust the mirrors or the seats. Went through that, went over the dashboard lights, went over basic electrical doohickeys, showed her the fuses, told her not to under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES lose the ignition key (it’s got a chip inside it and costs 50 bucks to replace, and you can’t start the car without it), and then on to the underhood area.

Got her to pop the hood (after showing her where the latch was) then opened it up. Showed her where the prop rod was. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Less than a little is even worse. As I mentioned, Reba was with us, and she wanted to help explain things, too, but I had my own run-down of “what’s important” that really needed to be covered in order of importance. However, I was not prepared for the wifely part of the student duo to ask so many immaterial questions, nor to supply so much incorrect information. “THAT’S the oil stick thing!” “Er, well, no, Reba, that’s the transmission fluid dipstick, but we’ll get to that in a minu--” “And that’s the carburetor!” “No, that’s the air filter box, but WAIT a minute and we’ll get to all of that in order.” ON and on.

Anyway, we finally got the class calmed down enough to cover the basics--air in here, fuel in here, explosions in here, caused by electricity here, hot gases leave this way, inside things go up and down like bicycle pedals, spin gears in here, turns these axles here, car goes. Battery, distributor, spark plugs. Intake, air cleaner, throttle body. Gas tank, fuel pump, injectors. Coolant, water pump, radiator. Brakes. Power steering pump. Engine oil, transmission fluid. Washer fluid.

I figure we’ll get to tire changing later. It’s time to DRIVE!

Off to the high school parking lot, which was blessedly free of traffic. Sometimes they have events in the summer, but Saturday it was nice and quiet, with only a couple of cars. Went over what we were going to do, namely just find out what the thing feels like under a variety of circumstances, turning, backing, stopping, judging distance, avoiding hard things.

First up, just letting the car roll around under its own power. Although I think everyone ought to learn to drive a stick, an automatic does have the advantage of instant movement gratification. First bad habit to break was the left foot braking. This is good if you’re a rally driver. Otherwise, keep that left foot over on the dead pedal. Had to explain the concept of a dead pedal.

Drive up, turn, stop, etc., for several minutes. Push the accelerator down more to go more fasterer. The brakes--oh, the brakes. Modulate, dear. It’s not an on-off switch. Easy pressure, smooth.

That’s one of the big problems of most drivers--too herky-jerky with the controls. Be aware of your surroundings, drive defensively, and you can anticipate most things and not upset the vehicle with all sorts of wild movements. Being that I like to pretend to be friends with people I don’t know, I told her that one of the hallmarks of The Wee Scot, Jackie Stewart’s driving style is that he is very fluid in his control, and strives for maximum smoothness in stopping, starting, and steering. (If I could ride with any race driver, I think it would be Sir Jackie.)

Anyway, I also told her back when cars were the size of buses, had slick bench seats with the unsupportive flatness of Kansas, didn’t have power steering, or power brakes, or automatic transmissions, or seat belts, one of the ways young people learned to operate their autoMObeels smoothly was to put an empty milk bottle in the floorboard on the passenger side, and try to drive without knocking it over.

I told her she’d have just have to imagine it since we had no milk bottles, and in doing so, try to be a bit easier on the brakes at the very end of the stop so I would not go thrashing into the shoulder belt every time.

More stopping and going, and then a couple of games of distance judging. “Drive around and center up on that orange barrel over there [there were a couple of barrels and a couple of cones in the parking lot from other school functions] and try to get as close as you can to the front of it without touching it.”

She initially stopped about twenty feet back, but I urged her to go on up and see how close she could get. Once stopped, I asked her how far away she THOUGHT she was from the barrel. “About this far?” Thumb and forefinger held approximately one inch apart. Girl got some work to do on judging distance! I figured we were about a foot away, so we got out and looked. She was quite surprised at how right I was and how very wrong she was. We got back in (because it was hot and the A/C was on in the car) and we went over about how to judge the corners of the car and how it requires some sense of geometry and imagination to accurately be able to place the vehicle in its own operating space, especially when parts of the car or obstacles are obscured by opaque solid matter such as the car body.

Next one was similar, trying to get her to touch the headlight corners on the barrel. Similar misjudgments, but at least she seemed to start understanding the concept. On around the parking lot some more. Looping turns, driving in the lane, going around obstacles, remembering to re-center the steering wheel, smooth braking, stopping on specific marks, then a parking space thing. “Pull to the RIGHT of that cone over there and try to get in that parking space.” Way wide, pulled all the way through. Stopped and discussed the exercise again, then did it once more. “How far over to one side or the other are you?” She said she thought she was too far my way. “How far forward are you?” She said she didn’t know. “And finally, how square are you in the parking space--is your front or rear end sticking one way further then the other?” She said she thought we were crooked, with the rear further my way than the front.

Time to look. Sure enough, she was too far my way, and the rear passenger side was on the line. The front end was over the line, but not by much. Back in, drive some more. She was having a pretty good time of it, and thankfully wasn’t being angry or defensive. Mainly because I told her to start with that when I say things like speed up, or slow down, or turn, or stop, it wasn’t a character judgment of her as a person. I was merely interested that she learn the rules of the road without sending me to the hospital.

More driving. Turns, and signaling of such. This time we went to the end of the row where the aisle turned.

“Turn to the right.”

“TURN.”

“TURN AND STOP!”

I will say this--if you teach your kid to drive, be sure to use a car with a handbrake. It sure does beat having to bore a hole in the floorboard with your foot. She’d gotten bollixed up a bit on which way to go, and was about to either run up on the sidewalk, or hit the car of the lady parked by the field house. More driving.

We went up and made the loop around the flagpole. Stay in the middle of the aisle. She had some difficulty understanding the relationship of the steering wheel position to the position of the wheels on the ground. She’d turn the wheel, and then seemingly expect the car to straighten itself up. Same with the brakes. She’d want to stop, but the idea of MAKING it stop was a new one. Explained that no one else is in control of the car except her, but she HAD to be in control of it. It wasn’t going to do it for her. (Unlike the typing of health class reports.)

Around once again, and this time I told her to pull into a parking space. Same instructions as before--how far over, are you square, are you up far enough? She’d done better. Back out. WHOA up there, girl. “Clockwise if you want to turn the wheels so you can head out.” She’d started turning the wheel the wrong way. Again, this stuff is second nature if you’ve been driving since when gas was 40 cents a gallon, but it’s new to some folks. Just try to remember the first time you tried to back a boat trailer or a U-Haul. Same deal. The way you think you should be sawing the wheel just doesn’t work.

More driving. Around and around. Next, as simple lane change maneuver test. I told her to drive toward the orange barrel, and I would tell her to go to the right or left of it, then she was to get into the drive lane and proceed to the end of the parking space aisle. Maybe only going ten miles an hour, but she still had some problems with it. Right and left, especially. “Okaaaay, now, leffffft.” She dutifully turned to the right. “I meant your OTHER left, Ashley!” She was going to start arguing with me, “I thought you said LEFT--” “Sugar, I did say left. You went right.” “Oh.” Went over again the idea that instructions weren’t offered because I didn’t love her, talked about the reason for the test was to get her used to changing lanes. Try it some more, this time with patented Wavy Hand Instruction! “Right…::point to right with hand::..GOOD!”

Next, more driving. Drive and drive, circles, stOPS. “Remember, you’re trying to make the end of the stop smooth. Stahhhhhhhhhhhhpppppp. Not STOP. Modulate. Gentle. Easy. GOOD!” Flagpole again, then time for some high-speed braking. Heaven help me.

“Okay, what we’re going to do is let you feel how it feels to engage the antilock brakes.” Explained the difference in techniques between threshold braking and the wham it to the floorboard ABS style. “Okay, go straight down this aisle. Go as fast as you can, and when I say stop, stand on the brake pedal.”

Good job. She did it just right. Teletubbies say AGAIN!

This time I let her go a bit further, and this time the rear passenger wheel skidded a bit. The Focus (as far as I know) only has front ABS, since the little rear doughnuts don’t do much more than keep the trunk from dragging the ground. Explained that to her, and time again for one more. “How fast did you think you got up to?” “I DON’T KNOW! MAYBE SIXTY?”

Heh. 115 horses pushing 3400 pounds across a school parking lot, sixty mph was as unlikely as a politician telling the truth. We rolled around again and she repeated the exercise, this time getting some serious screechage from the rear tire. “Very good. And by the way, that was only 30 mph.”

More loops and turns and signaling and such, and then it was time for some serious work. On the road…

Posted by Terry Oglesby at June 20, 2005 11:00 AM