As human beings, we all harbor deep, dark secrets; it goes with the territory. Most of us are not burdened with the knowledge of where Jimmy Hoffa is buried, or the identity of Jack the Ripper, or who killed JFK. But, I suspect that each of us keeps something locked away, that is either personally embarrassing, or, upon reflection, is not a proud moment for us.
The belief that confession is good for the soul is liberally sprinkled throughout the Bible, and has been adopted as an aphorism which appears more broadly in society to this day. The Catholic Church has incorporated confession as a key part of its rituals: the “confessional” is a box of some sort in which the priest is seated on one side of a barrier, usually latticed to allow for verbal communication, but somewhat obscuring a clear view, and the penitent appears on the other side, sometimes kneeling. I gotta’ be honest, not having a direct relationship with the Catholic Church, most of my confessional knowledge has been provided by TV sitcoms, so the sad-looking priest pictured above is drawn from my somewhat limited frame of reference, usually played for comedic effect.
Alright, I’ll go first. I believe it’s time for me to come clean; it’s been forty-five years, after all. No, I didn’t kill a guy, or even steal something (Why would you think that? It’s as if you don’t even know me). No, the secret I’m about to reveal has to do with my drivers’ education training experience, way back in high school.
As a fifteen-year-old student at New Trier East High School, in Winnetka, Illinois, I received drivers’ education training, both in a classroom containing driving simulators, and on the actual road, behind the wheel of an actual car. I did fine in the simulator; behind the wheel of an actual car is where I encountered some difficulty.
In the classroom, one of the elements of our training was the screening of a film featuring the death and destruction wrought by horrific car crashes, akin to the documentary entitled, “Scared Straight,” in which juvenile delinquents are berated and terrorized by actual convicts, in an attempt to scare them away from re-offending. This film may have been entitled, “Scared to Ten and Two,” but, then again, it may not have been (As I understand it, current drivers’ education training has diverged from the old advice regarding placement of the driver’s hands on the steering wheel, perhaps to “Nine and Three,” or even, “Eight and Four.” Let’s face it - most of us drive with our hands in our laps, occasionally lifting an index finger to about “Five,” or “Seven.” And, don’t get me started on teaching kids the proper batting stroke in baseball - I coached a lot of youth baseball, and always taught the smooth, even stroke - now I see coaches encouraging the downward, hacking swing - I don’t get it). I think there’s a market opportunity here for other films in this genre, which would serve as a cautionary tale to those inclined to pursue harmful behavior: “Scared to the White Sox” (intended to prevent youngsters such as me from becoming long-suffering Cubs fans); “Scared Childless” (designed to avoid the perils of parenthood); and “Scared into Insurance or Banking” (crafted to avert one from spending most of his professional career in the cratering newspaper business).
My driving instructor was a teacher named, John Schneiter, who likely derived greater personal satisfaction from his forty-three year career coaching high school basketball, than from dragging neophyte drivers around town. There were typically three of us in the car, in addition to Schneiter, as we headed out from the school to traverse the local streets. Oftentimes, he would direct us to the driveway of a tidy house, in a quiet suburban neighborhood, instructing us to, “Wait here.”
I assumed that he was stopping in to have lunch with his wife, but, let’s face it, there are other ways he could have amused himself in the twenty minutes his three passengers spent cooling their heels in a drivers’ education car, parked in his driveway. Hey, what he does on his own time. . .wait a minute, that wasn’t his own time, that was our time! Perhaps Schneiter could have learned a lesson from this column regarding confession?
During my turn at the wheel (and, I’d like to think it was my first time behind the wheel), we were approaching the high school. and Schneiter instructed me to take a right turn onto Winnetka Avenue, which ran in front of the school. I successfully performed the right turn, but didn’t correct and straighten the steering wheel. The car kept turning right, and the car ended up perched atop a very large snowbank piled up at the intersection. . .directly in front of the main entrance to the high school. Now, I should point out that, in a drivers’ education vehicle, there is an emergency brake pedal located on the passenger side of the front seat, which allows the instructor to apply the brakes at the first hint of trouble; it’s apparent that this pedal was not utilized in this instance. As Schneiter no doubt well knew, on the basketball court, if a defender lets down his guard, the opponent drives to the basket and scores. In a drivers’ education vehicle, if the defender (i.e. the instructor) lets down his guard, the car ends up on a very large snowbank piled up at the intersection. . .directly in front of the main entrance to the high school.
The car was quite firmly embedded on the snowbank, and no amount of mechanical coaxing, or, eventually, manual pushing could extricate the car from the snowbank. And so, I toddled off to my afternoon classes, and tried to pretend that I wasn’t permanently scarred by the experience. The school was buzzing about the car stuck on the snowbank, in front of the school, and although I believe I confided in several close friends, there was no way I was going to admit to my sin more broadly. Can you imagine a more disqualifying event in the mind of a fifteen-year-old, on the verge of earning a driver’s license? I imagined that I would never be allowed to drive a car (Are you hearing, as I am right now, and as Ralphie heard, in, A Christmas Story, “You’ll shoot your eye out, kid!”?).
It was certainly a blessing that this incident occurred years before social media existed. The image of the car, perched on a very large snowbank piled up at the intersection. . .directly in front of the main entrance to the high school, would have been low-hanging fruit for social media “influencers,” and could easily have become a “meme” which could rival the recent “Bernie Sanders in mittens at the Inauguration” meme. In fact, if I was more capable of deploying memes, I could have placed Bernie behind the wheel of the drivers’ education car, perched on a very large snowbank piled up at the intersection. . .directly in front of the main entrance to the high school.
After several hours the car was towed off the snowbank, but the school chatter didn’t subside for several days. I remained mum. One of my friends, in whom I had confided, wondered, “Didn’t your dad ever place you on his lap, behind the wheel of the car, when you were a little nipper?”
I had to confess to him that, no, I had never been placed behind the wheel of a car before, either in my dad’s lap, or on the seat. I suppose I had led a sheltered life up to that point.
In any event, over time, the school chatter subsided, and as far as I knew, my parents never caught wind of the incident (which was obviously my greatest fear). Schneiter never mentioned it again, likely because the result may have suggested significant negligence on his part. I climbed back into the car with Schneiter and the two other kids, and eventually secured my driver’s license, and gained occasional driving privileges from my parents, while in high school.
So there it is, I have now made a clean breast of it (you know, I’ve gotten it off my chest), and I feel much better. But, I believe this confession needed to wait forty-five years, before it was acceptable to come clean - well-aged, like a fine wine.
Allow me to suggest to an old classmate of mine, from eighth-grade, whom I will call, “Charlie,” (because that’s his name), that now might be the time for him to make his own confession; it’s been nearly fifty years now. A tradition of eighth-grade classes at Joseph Sears School, in Kenilworth, Illinois, was for the entire class (about seventy-five kids) to travel to Washington, D.C., in order to experience first-hand the seat of government, by visiting the usual haunts: Lincoln Memorial, Jefferson Memorial, the Capitol building, the Smithsonian Institution, and others.
We had a group picture taken on the steps of the Capitol complex (No, we weren’t storming the Capitol; we were invited there by our local congressmen), and Charlie, located at the very edge of the group, took the opportunity offer a middle-finger salute in the picture. Charlie was wearing, as were all of the boys, a dark sportcoat, against which his middle-finger was framed quite clearly.
During our twenty-year reunion, at which Charlie was not present, I was not the only one to recall the unique feature of that group picture. (As a rule, I don’t recommend attending school reunions - why would you go out of your way to slap a nametag on your dark sportcoat, and gather in a hotel ballroom, with a bunch of people you really don’t remember, or much care about? Plus, what if one of them surfaced an old chestnut, such as that time there was a drivers’ education car, perched on a very large snowbank piled up at the intersection. . .directly in front of the main entrance to the high school? And if you did actually care about them, you could simply connect with them on your own - perhaps utilizing social media). So, maybe there’s no need for a confession from Charlie, although I suspect his parents were not apprised of his stance in the picture. And, I don’t necessarily recall teachers or administrators flashing on that issue, either. But, given that our visit to Washington, D.C. in the spring of 1974 occurred during the final days of Richard Nixon’s presidential reign (he resigned in August of that year), perhaps Charlie’s transgression became shunted aside quickly.
Perhaps the lesson here is that, yes, confession is indeed good for the soul, but:
Don’t confess right away - silence is best (this can be termed, the “Bill Clinton, ‘Deny, deny, deny’ strategy".” I think this approach would have played out just fine for Clinton, had he heeded the advice contained in the third bullet below (i.e. wait a minimum of forty-five year before confessing).
Look to other incidents and events to push aside evidence of your sins (i.e. take advantage of the constantly evolving news-cycle - Nixon’s final days served Charlie well in this regard, but almost anything will suffice - you know, a pandemic, or a contentious presidential election, or Alec Baldwin’s wife pretending to be Spanish).
Step up and confess after an appropriate period of time - forty-five years is the bare minimum, in my opinion.
Alright, now it’s your turn.