Female Drivers and Growing Up

Children first learn about the larger world through their parents and those around them. They take everything in at face value, as they have nothing to compare it to. Whatever they face, they feel is “natural”—that’s just the way the world is. So, the Tooth Fairy visits and Santa is jolly, and that’s that.

And, when I was a child in the 1950’s women could not drive cars. It was a simple given fact. “Female drivers” were a menace on the road. Whenever a woman was involved in a traffic accident, it was clearly because she was a “female driver.” The accidents that men were involved in were “the other guy’s fault,” “lousy weather,” “lousy goddamn road,” or some mechanical failure, such as “the goddamn wheel fell off.” (Everything was a “goddamn” when I was young, including the “goddamn basement door” which always stuck.)

I recall once seeing a woman who had hit a dog with her car which then veered into a stop sign, somehow managing to impale her car on it. I remembered the look of helpless embarrassment on her face. I saw that same look later in life on the faces of women who were married to bullies. The shame, and hope that, if she kept quiet, somehow no one would notice.

During my teens and twenties personal transportation was mainly by subway or streetcars (Toronto), Metro (Montreal), and buses (both). I rarely encountered any drivers, male, female, or otherwise. Automobiles were just something I had to dodge when I crossed Young Street or Ste Catherine. Somehow, by my late twenties, female drivers were common and when they did give me a lift I appreciated it and was not at all worried for my safety. In the intervening years I had forgotten all about “female drivers” and the dangers associated with them.

There were many things that were simple facts when I was young that somehow, over the years, evaporated, to be replaced by my experience and learning. For example, if one made a clever remark then one was “too big for your britches.”  Cleverness became a desirable asset later in my life and if you were too big for your pants it meant it was time to lose some weight. If you stood up for your rights, you were told “don’t give me any of your goddamn talk-back.” Later, “standing-up-for-one’s-rights,” became a rather heroic stance.

Teachers were always right about everything. It didn’t matter if they spouted nonsense; you had to “respect” them. Later in life I attempted to get idiots removed from classrooms and quietly stood behind my son when he stood up to a homophobic teacher by boycotting his classes. When another son was being tormented by a bully who failed him three years in a row, I demanded that the principal intervene and get my son someone who could actually teach.

Let’s see: policemen were always right. If someone was arrested that meant that he was automatically guilty. It made sense; after all, why would the police arrest someone if he was innocent? It didn’t take me long to learn the fallacy of that belief. I encountered more than my share of bullies in uniform when I was a young adult. It took me even longer to learn that most police officers are not crude bullies, but can be helpful and sometimes heroic human beings.

My view of the military was complicated. When young I admired soldiers and their equipment. And then, in my early teens, I overheard my father telling neighbours that after high school I was going to join the army for two years “to become a man” and then go to business college. No one had consulted me on the subject. All I knew after overhearing that comment was that I was never going to have anything to do with the military or business. And then, with the war in Vietnam and the spread of nuclear weapons, my aversion became focused. There was no doubt in my mind that soldiers were insane murderers. I had a bit of trouble reconciling that with the actual former military people I knew who, for the most part, were normal people. But, when you are young everything is black and white and moral certitude is always on your side.

It took me a few years but eventually I started to see things from the soldier’s point of view and started buying poppies for Remembrance Day, solemnly observing the silence to mark the sacrifices of those who had gone to war. I still had no sympathy for the politicians who sent them there, but, I realized that the front-line soldier was not a monster. Most of them were ordinary men and women trying to do an extraordinary job.

In the mid 1990’s I attended a church conference at the Petawawa military base. We stayed in the barracks and in the early morning I watched a troop of soldiers with full packs jogging in the mist. As I was walking across grounds I fell into step with the Brigadier-General of the camp and we remarked on how beautiful the location was, perched high in the hills overlooking the Ottawa River and the hills of Quebec on the other side.

“You know,” I ventured. “I never imagined I would ever be in a military base. When I was young we sat outside the gates blocking the entrances.”

“I know,” the commander of the camp said. “We generals knew you guys were right. The people at the top knew what those weapons could do and what they represented. It was insanity.”

After that conversation I felt much better about a lot of things.