Derryfield Driving Shenanigans
Above: Senior Sam Muskat poses behind the wheel.
The six months between the ages of fifteen and a half and sixteen are some of the most eventful of many teenagers’ lives. During this half-year, many people accumulate some of their most humiliating, least believable, and most-told stories. Why? The answer is simple: the infamous task of learning to drive. Having recently gone through the process of getting my own driver’s license, I’ve heard many a horror story from veterans of this tumultuous period and experienced my own variety of awkward episodes; my driver’s ed teacher liked to tell my class about all the times he had gotten tickets, especially when he drove 130 miles an hour to get back to the military base after visiting his girlfriend for too long and got pulled over eight times along the way. Whether it’s a lunatic of a driving instructor, a traffic mishap that almost leads to disaster, or a first licensed outing gone wrong, there’s no doubt that this turbulent time makes for a plethora of colorful stories. Here are just a few of Derryfield’s best new-driver antics.
Many of us have suffered the wrath of strange driving instructors. Senior Sam Grondin’s teacher was, as many members of this particular profession are, a bit bizarre. He was a conspiracy theorist and was convinced that water-vapor trails left by planes in the sky were actually chemical trails that the government was spraying to get people to obey. He thought that people could tolerate the chemicals, but animals couldn’t. Whenever Grondin was doing driving hours and saw roadkill, his instructor would say, “They’re out spraying today, look at all the dead animals!” Other responses from a survey taken of the Junior and Senior Classes about their experiences also turned up some strange-sounding driver’s ed teachers: Andrea Mello ’17 described her teacher simply as “psychomaniac@gmail.com”, while Makayla Decesare ’18 portrayed hers as “the strangest human being I have ever met in my life. He was stout, about five feet tall, and was very odd. He used to have students pull over so he could get snacks, or sometimes juice boxes out of his trunk so he could eat them while we drove. While opening the food he would sing to himself ‘yummy yummy yummy…’ He frequently broke into random nursery rhymes in the middle of driving lessons.” Another story, collected from Matt Michaud ’19, details Michaud’s experience while alone in the car with his instructor, Ted, who started a conversation about his ex-girlfriend from forty years ago who he “just wanted to get coffee with”, which Michaud described as “so deep that it started to get creepy.”
As for first outings as legal drivers, Derryfield students know that the first time getting behind the wheel can be a little nerve-wracking. Gabi Brummett ’17 was on a practice drive when she made a “90 degree turn at 50 miles an hour” and her dog pooped herself in the back seat because she was so scared. Kelly Collins ’17 says she tried to put her car into park without slowing down, and Tyler Crews ’17 drove off an on-ramp and was forced to go backwards all the way back up the ramp. Erika Wentz ’17 “almost died” while observing a fellow driving student who swerved towards a parked eighteen-wheeler while trying to merge and was only saved from disaster at the last second when the instructor grabbed the wheel. In Wentz’s words, a driver’s ed accident is “honestly, one of the worst ways to die.”
When asked for the worst advice they’ve gotten about driving, senior Talia Sperduto replied that hers was “don’t be aggressive”, while Mello says the most memorable advice she’s gotten was “you can always outrun the cops if you go fast enough.” On the more practical side, Crews recommends always bringing snacks and coffee to driving classes, warning, “you will get tired, and you will get hungry.” But, I suppose the best advice one can get when learning how to drive comes from Senior Olivia Husak’s favorite suggestion: “Drive fast, don’t crash.” Stay safe out there, kids!
Above: Students in the Senior Parking Lot
Livi Burdette is a Junior at DS and the Human Interests Editor for Lamplighter.