^{Confessions of a Late-Life Driver}
By Marsi Buckmelter 

When I was a month shy of my thirtieth birthday, my husband decided that not having a driver's license was a lousy thing for me to have in common with our three-month-old son.

The same brown eyes - yes. A fair complexion and practically opposable big toes - you bet. An "outie" bellybutton - hey, why not? But no driver's license? He had a point: At the rate I was going, our son had a good chance of getting his driver's license before I did.  

The thought of driving a car had always made my stomach lurch. When people found out that I was a non-driver and asked why, I glibly joked that I was a lethal weapon behind the wheel, tacitly suggesting that I could drive but simply chose not to. The truth is, I was absolutely phobic about driving.

When I was eleven, one of my uncles offered to let me drive an electric golf cart. All in all, it would have been a good experience, had I not mistaken the power pedal for the brake and nearly smashed into a brick wall. Badly shaken and certain that I posed a huge threat to society, I didn't attempt driving again until I was a 29-year-old wife, mother, and graduate student. 

"Look at them, Steve. They're babies," I whispered to my husband as we waited to confirm my driving clinic reservations. I looked at my fellow student drivers, lanky teens full of enthusiasm for the weekend ahead. One boy, literally half my age, had a mohawk and lazed against the front door of his monster truck. A sticker on the back window warned, "Fear This." I thought, "I do. Oh God, I do."

I marveled at the confidence and excitement that these kids had for learning to drive. For them, it meant dates, after-school jobs, and road trips. Freedom. Emancipation. Adulthood. For me, it meant overcoming more than fifteen years of fearing that I'd get the pedals mixed up and kill myself.

After dividing into two groups, we began our day by warming up on a circular course strewn with orange pylons. Around and around the course we drove at 10 mph, avoiding cones and shielding our eyes from the rising sun. My group's collective talent for maneuvering between cones at extremely low speeds quickly became evident to our instructors, who presented us with increasingly challenging courses.  

Our group spent the rest of the afternoon tooling around on the skid pad to master inclement-weather driving skills.  

"Look at where you want to go," our instructors reminded us, "and steer in that direction." 

(CONTINUE...)