"Do You Know The Way to San Jose?" (Bom Bom Bom Bom Bom Bom Be Dom Dom)

I took driver’s education when I was 15 years old.  I remember going to this shed (literally a shed with electricity, people.) in the bowels of San Jose and sitting there watching “Red Asphalt” for hours after taking quizzes that mimicked the California DMV’s licensing test.  Our instructor was a 50-ish year old beer-bellied individual with coke bottle glasses, long sideburns and slicked back gray hair named Max.
 
The class was divided into a few all-day Saturday sessions.  The first couple Saturdays went fine; we watched the obligatory videos (VHS tapes, people), and took the required quizzes (Scantron, folks).  We sat in creaky old metal folding chairs, listening to Max drone on with mildly entertaining stories featuring his own driving habits in his 1988 Hyundai Sonata.  No biggie.

 On the third Saturday, my mom was unable to drive me to the class, so my Dad became the appointed chauffer for the morning.  We bombed down the 280 freeway south from middle class Mountain View (it was middle class back then) towards San Jose in silence, as the sounds of The Carpenters’ drifted from the speakers of the Buick LeSabre sedan.  Eventually we reached the shed.  Thanking my dad for the ride, I angled my way off the velour seats and out of the vehicle, slammed the heavy car door and walked up to the ramshackle entrance to the shed.
 
I tried the fire-engine red painted doorknob.  Flecks of scarlet paint floated into the air as I jiggled it left and right.  Now I’m not the sharpest crayon in the crayon box, so I will tell you it did take me a good minute or so to work out that the door was, in fact, locked.  It was then I saw the note.  Taped to the frame of the door was a torn piece of binder paper, ripped from a spiral notebook.  Scrawled in Sharpie, in Max’s telltale all-caps, shaky writing, I read:
 
DRIVERS’ CLASS HAS MOVED.
SORRY.
-MAX B.
 
An address was listed under his signature.  Immediately I spun around, only to see my dad’s Buick LeSabre screeching around the corner of a stoplight, and accelerating down the street.  Like a fool, I ran after him, arms waving, yelling “Stop!”  Um, yeah.  Well, that was, as you can imagine, quite unsuccessful.  I don’t blame him.  I’d want to get out of this particular part of San Jose as quickly as possible too.
 
Slight panic and mild anxiety rose as I wracked my brain trying to figure out what to do next.  These were the days before cell phones, and I had $5.00 in my pocket.  No change for the pay phone, even if my mom would have been home to call.  I waited for awhile, to see if any other students in the class showed up.  Apparently, I was the last one to arrive.  OR Max had mentioned the move during the last class session, and I had been spacing out- both of which are high possibilities.
 
Eventually, I accepted the fact that I no one else was coming, and I was on my own.   I didn’t know whether to cry or just get moving.  I heaved a sigh, grabbed the paper off the door frame and set out to take to the streets, in hopes of finding the address of the class location.  About a block away I found a gas station, and back in those days, those gas station attendants basically accepted that part of their job description was to give directions to lost souls in need of guidance.
 
Unfortunately for me, the gas station attendant did not speak English, and my 2 years of high school Spanish weren’t quite sufficient for a conversation of this magnitude.  I continued down the street and discovered a Burger King, where I waved Max’s note in the manager’s face and asked if he could help me.  In those days we had what was called a “Thomas Guide”, which was essentially an encyclopedia of maps.  Lucky for me, the manager happened to have one, and we looked up the address.  We discovered the “new location” for the class, as shady and scary as this sounds, was at a motel a few blocks away.  Taking pity on me, he scribbled down some directions, gave me a free soda, and sent me on my way. 
 
What was probably a 20 minute walk felt like hours.  I felt like a vagabond as I traversed over random garbage on the street, old copies of The San Jose Mercury News, and made my way past abandoned shopping carts.  Finally, I saw the sign.  “E-Z 8 Motel”.  I shuddered, feeling like I needed a shower, but I walked up the ghetto cement stairs and into a room that was allegedly this particular establishment’s version of a conference room.  Slowly, I opened the door a few inches.  Immediately, I heard the familiar sound of a police siren blaring, which was strangely comforting: “Red Asphalt” was playing.  The door was in desperate need of some WD-40, and a loud creak announced my presence.  I pushed it open some more, and there was Max in all his coke-bottle, slicked back, beer-belly glory, standing next to a TV-VCR combo.  A big smile spread across his face.  “Well, looks like you found us, Little Lady! I was starting to get worried!” he bellowed.  I wanted to shout, “Seriously?  You friggin’ idiot!  What the hell happened to having class in the shed?  You seriously just let a 15 year old girl walk by herself through one of the nastiest parts of San Jose?  And what the eff are we all doing in this God-forsaken hourly-rates hotel?” But instead, I just gave a weak smile, sat down, and wiped my sweaty brow with the edge of my “UCLA Alumni” sweatshirt. (truth: I was NOT a UCLA Alum.  In fact, at that point in time, I had never even been to that campus. My Uncle taught Art History there.  But whatever.)
 
That is not the only time I’ve been lost and alone in my lifetime.  Left to find my own way.  It can feel terrifying and overwhelming.  But one thing I have learned that has helped me tremendously is to follow the well-saged advice of a very wise man I know, who always says “Amy, don’t worry about the whole journey in it’s entirety; just do the next indicated step.”  That phrase rings so true for me.  Yes, it’s one step at a time, literally, to get from a skanky old shed in San Jose to a cheap ass motel in San Jose.  It’s literally just one foot in front of the other.  Sometimes the pathway isn’t clear.  Sometimes I need to enlist the help of others.  But I had to keep moving; after all, the Driver’s Ed. class wasn’t going to magically teleport itself back to that shed.  And so it is if I ever feel lost and alone, in a fog.  I don’t have to see the whole pathway, I just need to be calm and focus long enough so I can see the next place to place my foot…. Even if it *is* atop weathered copies of The San Jose Mercury News.
 
One Step At A Time,
A-Team Mom XOXO