Stood Up

The kid didn't show.

As you may have read, I was stopped last week by a 16-year-old neighborhood kid who all but commanded that I give him a driving lesson. We agreed, I thought, to meet on the corner by my building at noon on Saturday, whereupon I'd make sure he had his learner's permit and we'd head to a nearby dead K-Mart parking lot for some lessons.

I sat on my stoop for about 20 minutes, reading The Reader and watching for the kid. I finally got up at about 10 after and walked down to the corner where he stopped me, but if he was there waiting for me he was long gone by then. So I walked around the block and went home, checking the tomato plants on my way up the back stairs.

I was disappointed. I really was looking forward to the lesson, if only so I could find out more about this kid who was willing to ask total strangers to teach him to drive. Gotta wonder about the homelife of someone like that. Do they have a car? Does his father live with him? Does mom work nights, too tired when she gets home to take her son for a drive? I could fashion an intensely detailed fantasy life for this kid, make it as melodramatic as any movie, but in reality he was probably just messing with me, hoping to get a lesson right then and there and figured my offer for later was just something said to get rid of him. He could have been right, were I in a worse mood. I could easily have blown him off, too, but I would have felt terrible about it.

Posted by Andrew Huff at September 15, 2003 02:27 PM