Teaching Connie how to drive

By kiki

Connie asked me to gas up her car, and this story came to mind. Sometime around the late fifties, Connie asked me to teach her how to drive a car; I told her okay, but only if she would listen to me. She would listen, she said. So one weekend soon after, I took her to an empty parking lot where I explained the car mechanics to her and told her that she would only need her right foot to drive my '55 Buick. Gas and brake pedals to be worked with the right foot only, and imagine that she didn't have a left foot. "I don't have a left foot?" She asked me; no, you don't have a left foot, I told her repeatedly before I let her behind the wheel. Once I thought she had gotten the concept of driving a car, I let her behind the wheel, with me riding shotgun, and what was the first thing she did as we started rolling down the parking lot? She stepped on the gas pedal with her right foot and slammed the brake pedal hard with her left foot! Okay, it was her first time behind the wheel, so I thought, 'give her a chance to learn this thing' after talking to her about what she was doing wrong, I told her, "okay, babe, let try it again, but try to remember what I told you, right foot only" Did she remember? No! She did the same thing! After the third time doing the same thing, I told her, "let's go home, we'll come back another day" I am not a very patient man, so I needed to figure out how I was going to teach Connie how to drive.

A week or so later at the car dealership I was working at a '52 Buick was traded in on a new car; after checking the Buick out, I went looking for the new car sale's manager, a guy named Mel; I asked Mel if I could buy the Buick "for fifty bucks it's yours" he said. Sold "take the fifty bucks out of my paycheck," I told him. So that evening after work, I drove the old Buick home; on the way home, I talked to Mr. Old Buick, I said "Mr. Buick, you're going to teach Connie how to drive" When I got home, Connie asked me "where did you get that car from, and where is your car?" I told her that a coworker was driving my car home for me and that the red '52 Buick was-hers "my?" she asked. "Yes, babe, it's all yours," I said to her as I put the keys in her hand "now go learn how to drive it" And learn she did; she did it slowly and all on her own. Finally, though, she did drive with two feet for many, many years. - Two months or so later, I took her to the DMV for her driver's test. She passed with flying colors on her first try and walked out with her driver's license. So what's the moral of the story? Well, she has been driving for over fifty years, and she has never learned how to put gas on her cars!!