Alandra's Lilacs: The Story of a Mother and Her Deaf Daughter

12. Our Too Cool Daughter

CHAPTER TWELVE Our Too CooL Daughter ~ Alandra's sixteenth summer arrived and with it came her driver's license (long awaited by her, and much dreaded by us). I was commiserating with some co-workers who were also parents of teenagers, when they expressed their surprise that deaf people could get a license to drive. So many people still see deaf people as handicapped-though I believe very strongly that they are not. I laughed, and explained that loud music from the car radio never interferes with a deaf person's ability to see flashing lights. I also reminded them that a hearing person often can't hear a siren over the blare of the road noise and the radio, and that our eyes are not as keen as a deaf person's eyes. I told the remaining skeptics that my daughter often sees flashing lights in a mirror well before I see them. This conversation with my co-workers was the first time I noticed that I had taken on the role of enlightening hearing people about deafness. When I was studying to get my license, the school taught me to drive both standard and automatic transmission cars. Today, schools only teach new drivers how to drive an automatic, and unfortunately our family's cars were standards. On the way home from the grocery store one day, Alandra begged me to let her drive. We changed positions Our Too Coo! Daughter and she started revving the car's engine, trying to make it go. When I drive, I listen to the engine and change gears based on what I hear. But I was at a loss for how to explain that to Alandra. After just a couple ofjumps and bucks from the car, I lost my patience and made her get back in the passenger seat. She was so angry with me. When we arrived home, Alandra went to her room to sulk while I told Tom about what had happened. He went and got her, and together they left in his car. When they returned an hour later, Alandra was elated and smugly announced that she knew how to drive a stick shift. Believe me, I didn't line up to be one of her first passengers. I asked Tom how he had accomplished this feat. He told me he put her at the bottom of a hill and told her to drive. (I thought to myself, Oh Lord, the transmission!) He then showed her how to watch the tachometer to know when she should shift. Several weeks later, Alandra took her driving test in our car. She must have paid very good attention to Tom's lessons because she got a license on her first try. We couldn't afford to buy Alandra a car, so of course she borrowed ours. Usually she would pick up one of her best friends, Sherri Cupit and Carol Wilson. The three girls had been in school together since we moved to Fort Worth. Because of the distances between our homes, they were rarely able to do more than talk on the phone for hours. The girls were all about the same age, so acquiring their driving licenses gave them more freedom to socialize together . With that one piece of paper, the isolation was dispelled as if through magic. Alandra called home one evening because she had run out of gas. I was at work with our second car, so Tom IOS Our Too Cool Daughter walked several miles to rescue her. On another occaSlOn Alandra called because she had hit a curb and wrecked both the tire and the wheel rim. After spending some time thinking about this incident, Tom realized Alandra had been signing and trying to drive at the same time. That scared him pretty badly. Although he always cautioned Alandra not to sign and drive at the same time, he was just wasting his breath. When you get two deaf girls together, you can't keep their fingers still. Tom still worries about Alandra driving and signing, even though she now has more than ten years driving experience behind her. We lived in Fort Worth, and Alandra began dating a deaf boy from Dallas. She had recently attended a party given by a deaf friend from Fort Worth, and this boy and one of his friends had crashed it. After hearing about these circumstances , I...