Sumayyah Ansari, GPC Student

JOHNNY’S FIRST DRIVING LESSON

The Sunday afternoon bustle was coming to an end on 125 Frances Street: church was over, lunch guests had gone home, and stomachs were full of traditional Lebanese home cooking. A boy of eleven, with a prominent nose and ears, a shock of auburn curls and dancing green eyes came out into the driveway of the family home. He was Johnny Abdelmaseh, second generation Lebanese-American, born and raised in scenic Worcester, Massachusetts. His grandfather had come to the United States from a village nestled in the hills of Southern Lebanon, on what the Lebanese and Syrian Orthodox community called the “Arab Mayflower”.

Johnny was like many other eleven-year-old American boys in 1960; he was encouraged to do well in school and to play sports. In fact, he was on his school’s basketball team. Johnny was automatically selected to be the center of his sixth grade basketball team since he was four inches taller than most of his peers. Having the bulk of a tomato stake didn’t seem to matter. That Sunday afternoon, Johnny wanted to shoot a few hoops in the driveway, practice for the next game which was a big deal for the parents of the local sixth graders. Johnny didn’t have to go to the park to practice; his father had attached a hoop to the wall right above the garage door. But there was one thing standing between Johnny and the hoop: a 1955 two-tone green and yellow Pontiac station wagon…the family car. Johnny yelled into the living room window where his father was watching the football game on television: “Hey Dad, can you please move the car back so I can play basketball?” His father, engrossed in the football match, replied in a heavily sarcastic Boston accent: “Aw, move it ya-self!” “Hmmm”, thought Johnny, “Is he serious?” Johnny went inside and looked inquisitively at his mother who was witnessing the curious exchange from her corner of the living room. To Johnny’s delight, she mischievously motioned with her eyes to the car keys lying on the kitchen counter.

Calling his father’s bluff, Johnny grabbed the keys and, with a sense of mission, marched out to the car. “How hard can it be”, he thought, “Dad does it all the time!” With butterflies in his stomach and the excitement of his first drive ahead of him, Johnny turned the key in the ignition and heard the motor start. He imitated all the preliminary motions he had observed each time he saw his father drive; he held the shift, put the car in gear, and figured he was putting the car in reverse. “Every time Dad does this, the car goes back, right?” He put his hand behind the headrest of the passenger seat and, while looking back, floored the gas. To his horror, he realized that although he was looking back, the car lurched forward. Johnny and the Pontiac accelerated at rocket speed through the garage door, through the empty garage, and smashed head-on into the 144 square foot back garage wall. With an explosive bang, the impact of the car took off the entire back wall in one neat piece!

The Pontiac was now airborne and descending into the back lawn, with the garage wall balancing on the hood. The weight of the wall caused it to fall into the lawn and become wedged into the grass, stalling the car and bringing it to a crashing halt. Johnny’s face was frozen into an expression of shock and panic. His shock quickly turned into petrifying fear when he heard his father’s roaring and his mother’s crying. “Uh-oh, what’s gonna happen to me now?” He unwrapped his hands from the steering wheel and dragged himself out of the car, dreading what was to come. His father, debating whether to hug Johnny or hit him, decided he was happy his son was still alive and hugged him. Johnny’s mother, crying hysterically, yelled at him: “If you want to go back, you’re supposed to put the car in reverse, not drive!” Well, the police were summoned, and the local paper even did a story on Johnny’s short-lived driving experience. And thus, a young boy’s simple request to make a little room to play ball turned him into a local celebrity. Of course, the neighbors tried to steer clear of the roads when Johnny became old enough to drive.