When my sister, Judy, and I were in high school, my father didn’t allow us to take Driver’s Education.

Teaching in the same school we attended, Daddy knew a lot about the faculty members, and he had a low opinion of that teacher, an opinion that was later verified. Judy and I learned to steer from our father’s or our uncle’s lap. Our family car was a 1958 black Ford Fairlane, and after daddy showed us the basics of three on a tree shifting, we practiced by backing the car out of our uphill driveway.

We studied the driver’s manual and took the test. Judy passed, but I failed the driving portion. When I pushed in the clutch, my head dipped below the steering wheel (I could still see through the wheel), but when I killed the engine when trying to park, they failed me.

By the time I could take the test again, we’d bought a second car with an automatic transmission and that time I passed without a glitch. I didn’t know it at the time, but failing the driving portion of the test was a foreshadow of things to come.

The first eight years I drove, I had eight wrecks. They were all misjudgments of space and time, but eventually I learned to adjust my expectations and avoid wrecks. Sadly, that did not cure all my driving woes. I was doing okay until we had our children. After that, many times we’d be heading out the door when somebody threw up, lost a shoe or missed a bus. Crisis over, I would head to school, knowing I was going to be perilously late and would drive like the wind to make it on time.

Close to my school and close to making it on time, I once tailgated a friend whose business was on the way to work. I knew where he was going to turn in, so I didn’t slow down when he turned. He later said, “I just knew you were going to slow down when I needed to turn, I knew it, I knew it, I knew it until YOU DIDN’ T SLOW DOWN!

Zipping along the highway I would sometimes pass fellow teachers and one teacher, Mack, one day called the library phone and asked to speak to me, identifying himself as Officer McGillicutty. Terrified, I answered the phone and listened to a long authentic sounding description of my 75-mph race to school that morning. Just as I began hyperventilating, Mack identified himself. Lord!

I’ve had some speeding tickets in my time, but when the officers pull me over and decide I’m a harmless, they are very nice about it. One year, returning home from teaching Vacation Bible School, I saw the blue lights flashing and pulled over. That year, the church had decided to include three-year-olds, and 22 attended. These babies were my last class of the night and by 8 p.m., they were overstimulated and tired. I was too.

One night Dan took his elderly mother to dinner and because she couldn’t step up into his huge Tundra truck, we switched cars. I had the truck; he had the Prius. The truck required much less pressure on the accelerator. I was tired, and when the policeman stopped me, it was because I’d been going 58 mph in a 45-mile zone.

I explained I wasn’t used to such a peppy car. I told him I was coming home from teaching at church and I had on the playful Vacation Bible School T-shirts we all wore. As I was looking for our proof of insurance papers, the officer saw that our insurance is with USAA, insurance for present and past military, and that knowledge, plus my true story, let me off the hook.

Back in 2018, we toured four of the six countries that had been part of Yugoslavia. At one point we were on a huge bus, driving along the twisty narrow roads of the Dinaric Alps in Montenegro. The road signs were in Montenegrin. We passed one particularly wordy one that our guide translated as follows: “Slow Down for Those of Us Who Love You.”

I now drive the speed limit. When I think back on the days when speed limits were my enemy, I realize how lucky I was. I got tickets. I had to have cars repaired but by the grace of God, no one was ever hurt.  I now do slow down for my kids, for my grandkids, for my husband and for myself. I slow down for those who love me and for those I love.

Cindy Arp, teacher/librarian, retired from Knox County Schools. She and husband Dan live in Heiskell.