Fifteen thought he could drive

When Fifteen was in my classes he was actually 15 years old. When Fifteen turned 15 and a half he applied, and received, his learners permit. It was a little surprising but we took it in stride.

Until the day we had a car parked in the crosswalk. We announced the license plate number, no response from staff, tried it again, nothing. We called the hospital to ask them to see if it was someone who didn’t realize they had parked in our crosswalk, nothing, so we finally called the police.

That’s when they came and told us it belonged to a Mrs. Fifteen. We recognized the name but Fifteen’s mother wasn’t in school to meet anyone and we called her over the intercom and got no response.

We thought it was odd but sometimes strange things happen in schools so we went to check with Fifteen to see if he knew where his mother was and why he thought she might have parked in the crosswalk.

At this point I choked back some serious laughter because Fifteen informed us he had been late for school so he had taken her car and driven himself to school.

DRIVEN. HIMSELF. TO. SCHOOL. WITHOUT. A. LICENSE.

I had to leave the room because there was no way I was going to keep from laughing. No way.

What you have to understand was that we knew Fifteen well. And we knew his mother even better. She was not going to take him deciding to ‘borrow’ her car lightly. We were, in fact, pretty sure she was going to ground him for the rest of his life at a minimum.

When she arrived and talked to the school safety officer who was there she clarified that Fifteen would not be driving again until he had Drivers Ed classes in high school. Fifteen seemed genuinely confused throughout the whole thing. He kept protesting that he had followed the rules, that he had obeyed the speed limits, that he was sorry he hadn’t asked but he knew she was working nights so she wouldn’t need it today and it wouldn’t inconvenience her since she would be resting and not using it. He really truly believed the only problem was with where he parked it.

I had been in classes to learn to be a teacher where they told us that student’s brains were still developing so they would sometimes do things that left us stunned. Their prefrontal cortex, where decision making happens, is not fully developed until they are young adults so an eighth grader was definitely going to do some things that would seem ill advised but I have to say, I don’t think it would ever have occurred to me to assume a child would drive themself to school with their parents car and then park right in front of the school.

What I learned from Fifteen was that sometimes children do things that leave adults speechless and stunned. Not because they are looking to make our hair turn gray or because they are looking for ways to make us lose our minds, but because they are still growing. I was reminded that just because someone looks grown up doesn’t mean they are. Thank you Fifteen for making me take a step back and remember that the children in my care are just that, children, and they deserve the chance to make mistakes and learn from them…just like the rest of us.