"SUSAN STROUPE!"

 “SUSAN STROUPE!”

Susan’s 43rd birthday is this Friday, September 12.  She was born in Nashville but lived there only 5 months before we accepted the call to Oakhurst Presbyterian Church and moved to Decatur.  She grew up in the multicultural church there, having many aunts and grandmas who helped to raise her.  We are grateful to the community of Oakhurst, which gave her such nourishment and gifts.

Today I’m remembering her sophomore/junior year of high school.  When she turned 16 and was just beginning her sophomore year, she got her learner’s permit to start learning to drive.  She indicated that Caroline did too much front seat driving, so I was elected to teach her to drive.  David had not yet gotten his driver’s license.  We practiced in the old DeVry parking lot not far from Dekalb hospital (that lot is now the VA), because it was usually deserted in the evenings and on weekends.  I also taught her how to parallel park in the lower parking lot of Oakhurst Presbyterian.  We would put two large garbage cans some feet apart, to simulate cars.  Susan was a fast learner, and it only took her a few lessons to get the parallel parking down.  

    In August of 1999, right before the start of her junior year in high school, she took the driver’s test.  Those were the days when the state of Georgia did not require applicants to drive on an actual road.  They had set up a driving course in the middle of the parking lot, where applicants took their driving tests.  We had an old Camry at that point, and it had many eccentricities.  One of them was that if you were using the air conditioning and cut the front wheels sharply to the left, the motor would shut off.  We knew that would not be acceptable to the driver’s license officials, so I advised her to roll down all the windows and tell the tester that the ac was broken.  It was one of those hot August days, and I watched as Susan began to take the test.  She did fine on it, and indeed she aced the parallel parking.  We had watched other youth take the test before it was Susan’s turn, and after the parallel parking part, there were still several parts of the test.  After Susan aced the parallel parking, the instructor told her to take the car back to the beginning.  When I saw that, I thought that Susan had failed miserably, and so did Susan.  When they got back to the beginning, the instructor told her:  “You’ve shown me enough – you made a 93 on the test, but I’ve just got to get out of this car.  I am just so damned hot in here.”

    I used the Camry as my ministerial car, and after Susan got her driver’s license, we worked out a deal on sharing the car.  She would take the Camry to school and leave it in the parking lot.  I would walk over in the morning, or Caroline would bring me over, to get the car for the day, and then bring it back to the school parking lot for Susan.  When she first started driving to school, she had a minor fender bumper accident, while she was creeping up in morning traffic on South Candler Street.  She looked down to get something and barely tapped the car ahead of her.  There was no visible damage to the other person’s car, but the other driver wanted to call the police to get an official report because it was her husband’s car.  The Decatur police came and ascertained no damage to the cars and no injuries to either driver.  The good part about this accident is that it was a relatively harmless lesson for Susan to learn that she must always keep her eyes on the road.  She also got another lesson in human relations on the road.  Later that week, the husband called to say that his wife was injured in the wreck, and that we should personally pay for her medical care so that our car insurance would not go up.  We were having none of it, and we called our insurance company to let them know what was going on.  They asked for a copy of the accident report from the police, so we went and got it and faxed (remember that ancient activity?) it to the insurance company.  We never heard anymore from anyone, but Susan had learned some good lessons early on.

    Ever since then, Susan has been an excellent driver, driving in all kinds of places – Minneapolis, Albuquerque, upstate New York, across the country when she was a puppeteer intern, and in crazy Baltimore. She also gave David some good advice on taking the driver’s test.  He was anxious about the test and put it off until he was a college student.  He saw that Susan had passed her driving test well, and I had also taught him how to drive.  Susan gave him a big and humorous boost.  She said: “David, think of the stupidest person you know who has a driver’s license.  They passed the test!”  That convinced him, and he went and passed the test, using some of the same strategy with the Camry that Susan had used.  

    We are so grateful for both of our children, but in this birthday week of Susan’s, we give thanks for her and for all her gifts to us and to so many others.  Thank you, Susan!!!!  Raise a glass to her on Friday!