[aephi alum]

My high school offered driver's ed classes, but enrollment was by age, and, since I was the youngest in my class, it would have been the spring semester of my senior year before I would have been allowed to take driving lessons. So my parents enrolled me at a driver's ed program at a yeshiva in Queens, NY (I kid you not) during the spring semester of my junior year.

Just before the start of my driver's ed course, my parents took me to the DMV to get my learner's permit. I passed my written test on the first try. And off I went to driver's ed. My class included both road time and classroom time. My parents also paid for additional road time with a local driving school, so, by the time it came to my road test, I had had plenty of time behind the wheel, much of it in Queens (where the drivers are bad, but not quite as bad as they are in Boston ... but I digress).

I went for my road test with 3 months' driving experience. 2 of my classmates and I were picked up by an instructor and driven over to Queens. The girl ahead of me failed her road test because she made a "rolling stop" at a stop sign, and the adjudicator barked, "YOU FAIL! AEPHI ALUM, YOU'RE NEXT!" I was as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs, but I passed, first try.

As for freaking my parents out - my father is the WORST back-seat driver EVAR. He taught my mother how to drive, and he put the polish on my driving skills once I had my license - but I got a lot of "You didn't stop long enough at that stop sign!" and "The speed limit is 55. You're going 56. SLOW DOWN." And then there was the infamous gasp. If my father thought that my mother or I was tailgating, going through a yellow light where he would have stopped, etc., he gave THE GASP. It got to the point where my mother wouldn't drive if my father was in the car.