"See where the broken line becomes solid?" Lynn said the other day as we headed back from hockey practice, making our way north on Progress Avenue just past the I-81 interchange where six lanes become four lanes. We were coming to a stop light where the four lanes start to squeeze into two. "The solid line is the point of no return. If the light changes to amber and you're at the solid line, you should keep going. If you're still at the broken line, you should stop, because the light will be red when you get to it."

I've been hearing these bits of driving wisdom for about two months now, since the day we picked up the official Pennsylvania Drivers Manual on our way to her annual physical. (I had to change the date of the physical to accommodate camp, field hockey, and the regulations for Pennsylvania drivers, which demand that the physical shall be not less than sixty days before the sixteenth birthday). 

Lynn's been dreaming about driving for at least ten years, but in the last year it's become an obsession. In Pennsylvania, one can obtain a learner's permit on the sixteenth birthday. To do so, the applicant must present a birth certificate, a Social Security card, an affidavit of good health, and pass a test of basic driving knowledge. You can't take the actual road test for at least six months after the permit is issued, you can't drive the car without being accompanied by a licensed driver over 21,  and you are supposed to log at least fifty hours of supervised instruction.

Like most state agencies, the office that issues these permits is open only Monday through Friday, 7:30 to 4:30. Lynn's hockey schedule keeps her occupied until nearly 6:00 every day, and I refused to request an early dismissal from her academic classes so she could go in the early afternoon. Lynn was delighted when she found out that although her school was closed today because of Yom Kippur (more than a third of our students are Jewish), the state offices were not.

She was very nervous about the knowledge test. It's computer generated. Out of three hundred possible questions, nineteen are presented on a touch screen. It's multiple choice (back in MY day it was oral -- you had to say the answer to an actual person), and if you're not sure of one, you can skip it. Only three wrong answers are permitted. Many students do not pass it the first time.

Lynn would have been horribly disappointed had she failed. (It would also mean returning to take it again, and our next window is not until the middle of October, when hockey season is over.) She did skip three questions, but got all of the others right, so she didn't have to guess at any of the problem ones. 

I drove us out of the badly-designed, hard-to-negotiate test venue and on to lunch at Friendly's. Lynn has already said that she expects her father will give her most of her instruction and practice. She thinks I'm too nervous for this. 

It was just after 1:30 when we finished lunch. Friendly's is on Route 22, a busy commercial highway in that part of town. Behind the restaurant, however, is a quiet residential neighborhood. As we approached the car, I handed her the keys. "Here," I said. "Take the back way out."

It was a good practice session for her. The neighborhood is old, and the streets wind over and around the land rather than being laid out in a grid the way a "planned residential development" that used to be a cornfield does. There was absolutely no traffic, but the cars parked her and there and the occasional pedestrian made the exercise more realistic than the times we've taken her to an empty office parking lot on a Sunday afternoon.

At one point we could see that up ahead a cat was crossing the street. It was a black cat. Not a sort of black cat, like a feline version of the Gateway box. A sincerely black cat. It stopped for a moment, put its back up like a Hallowe'en decoration, and then darted the rest of the way across. As we passed, it peered at us from under a car.

Lynn negotiated the rest of the way through the neighborhood, and then down Elmerton Avenue, where the speed limit is higher and the curves more dangerous, to her school. There we switched positions, and I completed the trip home over busy Progress Avenue. Ron took her to her flute lesson after dinner. I'm told she did a fine job both ways, including driving in the dark, in the rain, with the radio on.

We've certainly passed the point of no return.