Driving with Mrs. Whitt was terrifying. Mrs. Whitt was terrifying. She was also the only certified Behind the Wheel driving instructor in the entire county. While it was possible to take Behind the Wheel with any Virginia driving school, it was cheaper to take it through the high school’s certified instructor. Mrs. Whitt was a chain-smoking, sixty-something year old bus driver, infamous for her Behind the Wheel teaching style. And though I had heard horror stories from my classmates about their experiences with “The Whitt”, I never fully believed them; they seemed way too insane to be completely true. I soon found out, however, that they weren’t as far off base as I’d originally believed . . . .
One of the worst things about Behind the Wheel was how long it was. Three days, to be exact. Three consecutive days of on-the-road driving instruction, culminating in a two-part exam on the third day, where, if you passed, you would receive a temporary 90-day license. After the first day, I was ready to be finished. If I went even one mile over the speed limit, Mrs. Whitt yelled at me. If she thought I wasn’t going to slow down in time for the next speed limit sign, she yelled, or slammed on her master brake, or both (usually both). If I moved my hands out of the correct positioning on the steering wheel, she yelled. All of this was punctuated by her loud, vehement smoker’s cough. Usually, it was just a cough here and there, but every now and then, she’d have a real doozy of a coughing fit that shook her whole body. It was a little unsettling to be driving when one of these came on, because she’d still try to talk/yell at you while it was happening. I didn’t know if I should be worried or not, so I’d look over briefly at her, and she’d yell, “Eyes (cough) on the (cough) road! (Cough, cough) Eyes on the ROAD!” After an especially bad coughing fit, she said, “If I die in here, just shove me out of the car and keep driving, just leave me. Drive until you run out of gas.” I wish I could say she was joking, but it wasn’t really clear that she was.
On the second day of driving, I was approaching a stop light in the far right lane. The lane had an arrow indicating it was both a turn lane and continued through the intersection; Mrs. Whitt wanted us to go straight, so, instead of getting into the next lane, I stayed in the far right. I began to drive through the intersection as, suddenly, Mrs. Whitt yelled, “I said we were going STRAIGHT! You have to make a right here!”, grabbed the wheel, and yanked me into a right turn, scratching her arm on my fingernail in the process. “Now look what you did!” she yelled, while, at the same time, I yelled, “What are you DOING?!” I had never yelled at someone 40-plus years my senior before, and it didn’t go over well. She made me pull over, which I did, and she proceeded to yell and berate me; interestingly enough, it wasn’t my being in the “wrong” lane that made her so angry, but the scratch she received when she yanked the wheel from my hand!
While I knew I wasn’t the best 16 year old driver in the world, I did know that in this particular situation, I had done nothing wrong, and my stubborn streak of teenage pride wasn’t about to let go without her first admitting that fact. After she finished yelling, I explained to her, as calmly as I could, that I hadn’t done anything wrong—I went straight because the lane had an arrow that indicated I could go straight. She didn’t believe me. But, in an attempt to prove me wrong, I guess, she had me turn around and drive back to the intersection we’d just left. As we drove by, I pointed out the lane in question. BAM! I was right. Everything in the lane was exactly as I said it was. She conceded that I hadn’t really done anything wrong, “technically”, but went on to say something along the lines of how, in the future, I should stick to the lane with the straight arrow only. It was hard for her to admit she was wrong outright, so she danced around it, but I didn’t mind—either way, we both knew that I was right.
Behind the Wheel continued more or less uneventfully after that. She still yelled, coughed, and slammed on her brake plenty, but was a teeny tiny bit more gentle than she’d been before (at least to my ears). When the time came for me to take the test, I scored a 96 overall, and Mrs. Whitt (sincerely) told my driving partner and I that she was proud of us, and wasn’t worried about us being on the road at all; I guess even she knew that once you’ve Survived the Whitt, you can survive anything.
