50 for 50: 1987

YEAR: 1987

AGE: Turned 17 on Nov. 6

LOCATION: Chicago, Rascher Avenue

CUBS' RECORD: 76-85

SONGS I LIKED: "Just Like Heaven" by The Cure; "Mony Mony" by Billy Idol; "Keep Your Hands to Yourself" by Georgia Satellites

MOVIES I SAW: "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles," "Some Kind of Wonderful," "Lethal Weapon"

TV SHOWS I WATCHED: "Perfect Strangers," "A Different World"

VIDEO GAME I PLAYED: Super Mario Brothers

MUSIC VIDEOS I ENJOYED: "Where the Streets Have No Name" by U2; "True Faith" by New Order

Around age 12 or 13, I came to the realization that, in a few short years, I would be driving. This didn't cause anxiety exactly so much as disbelief -- I couldn't imagine actually behind the wheel of a car, driving on real streets and expressways, making important decisions that coincided with the decisions adults also on the road were making.

This wasn't a passing feeling -- I remember vividly, as if it was yesterday rather than 35-plus years ago that there was no way I would be driving, ever. That didn't stop me from taking the classroom portion of driver's ed in the summer of 1986 at the local public high school, or from taking the range/simulator requirements that November. Range was just driving around the parking lot and not putting your foot on the gas, but it was still operating a car.

I had gotten my permit after finishing classroom, but other than my dad taking me around an empty parking lot for a few minutes, I didn't use it. Over Christmas break, I would get take three two-hour sessions of traffic to officially pass driver's ed and be eligible to get a license. However, I hadn't driven on the road yet -- and I needed to at least try once before doing so with an instructor. 

Dad let me drive home from Golf Mill in the giant station wagon he owned ... and it was a little nerve-wracking. I remember seeing an irritated guy in my rear-view mirror when I think I didn't go immediately on a green light. I also turned down a too crowded side street and got sort of stuck, needing to back up to create some room. I was ready to give up, but Dad didn't want my first driving experience to end like that. We pulled up to the house to see my mother watching me park, smiling either happy to witness this historic moment or as a front to mask her disbelief this was indeed happen.

The three traffic sessions were probably not enough to cement me as a competent driver worthy of the license. I tried speeding up through a turn instead of slowing down, and the instructor led us to a parking lot to practice turns. On two of the three days, he had us drive to a Kmart in Des Plaines, where we waited in the car while he went inside and, I think, used the restroom for at least 10 minutes. I must have been more proficient by the third day, because he passed me, and I was eligible to get my license.

I held off making it official -- we thought that once I got the license, my mother's insurance rates would go up, up, up. That probably wasn't the worst thing: I needed more practice. Dad let me drive whenever went anyplace, and one of my favorite memories of this was taking the station wagon down to Lake Shore Drive, into downtown, out on the Eisenhower Expressway, and then to Russell's in Elmwood Park for lunch. 

Mom, however, wouldn't let me practice with her in the car, no matter how much I begged. One Sunday, we were late for a birthday party in Glenview, and I was denied the driving opportunity. She was going 45 in a 30 mph zone, which, being a snotty teenager, I pointed out and got the reply, "You want to never drive?" She didn't let me drive home, either

By May, my mom's insurance agent said that just having a 16-year-old in the house, even if I didn't have a license, would raise her rates. I don't know that was bad advice -- maybe insurance was different in the 1980s -- but there wasn't any reason to put it off. In Illinois at the time, if you received in B in driver's ed, you didn't have to take the road test (though you could get spot-checked based on your birthday). My friends took me to the DMV after school one day in late May, and I walked out an official driver.

Over the next six years, I didn't get to drive that often. Dad still let me anytime we'd go out, though he got a Grand Am with a stick shift that I just couldn't figure out when I was 17 -- my sisters would be in the back seat laughing every time I killed the engine. Mom generally wouldn't let me take the car out on weekend nights and she needed it weekdays, so I was reliant on friends for rides. I sometimes was asked to chauffeur my sisters, but that novelty eventually wore off. I didn't need a car at Marquette and really couldn't afford one anyway.

In 1993, my dad and stepmom gave me her old Civic, and I finally had a vehicle all my own. And I drove it a lot the first few months -- besides needing to get better at the manual transmission (I went through two clutches in three years), this was kind of the second wave of driver's ed, albeit at age 22. Any apprehension I felt a decade earlier was gone, and driving became as normal as walking.

Over the years, on rare occasion, I'll be behind the wheel and recall that nervousness from before, during, and immediately after the procurement of my driver's license. I have a 16-year-old who's an incredibly experienced driver, and Ben is about eight months away from being able to get his permit -- yet the fact I am driving throws me for a once-in-a-great-while loop. I guess some feelings from childhood you never quite shake.