C-13

When Was It Written
On Mother's Day 2007, I wanted to honor my wife and just let the folks of our faith family know how I feel about her. We have a great story - and this article tells how it got started.  In a broken down old car in driver's ed class... this is the story of C-13. 

Who Wrote It
Kevin Wood, Pastor


C-13
Most high school students will tell you that they really don’t look forward to their classes. I doubt if there has ever been a teenager who rolled out of bed saying, “I just can’t wait for Trigonometry today.” Perhaps the only class in every high school that gets teenagers’ excitement going is Drivers Ed, that fun little course spent cruising around a driving course or the city streets in a beat up, old grocery getter. For me, though, Drivers Ed was a school subject that changed my life forever. If it hadn’t been for Drivers Ed, my life just might not have turned out the same.

My teacher in Drivers Ed was Coach Mike Jones. He was also my baseball coach for our high school team. Every day of the spring term in my 10th grade year, I spent an hour with Coach Jones in class and two hours on the field. He was a better coach than a teacher, but what he did as a teacher in that Drivers Ed class meant more than anything he ever did on the field. And the funniest thing about it is that he never meant to do anything at all. He just made a simple mistake.

On the first day of actual driving, the day when students are first allowed to get behind the wheel of a real car, Coach Jones posted a sheet with the names of each student and their assigned driving partner as well as their assigned car. And there on the bottom of the sheet was my name “Kevin Wood” listed next to the name of my partner and car: “Traci Wood, Car C-13”. “Who’s that?”, I thought. I knew a Traci Hunt, a little red-haired girl in my class whom on several occasions I had noticed because to be real honest she was just pretty. I went to Coach Jones’ desk and asked him who Traci Wood was. Coach Jones admitted the mistake, took out his pen, and scratched out “Wood” and wrote in “Hunt”. I laughed it off. He laughed it off. Traci even laughed it off when I told her. Then the two of us walked off together as driving partners in car C-13, an ‘83 Dodge Aries with squealing drive belts and wobbly tires.

I spent one hour each day in car C-13 with Traci Hunt. Even though the course was Drivers Ed, I spent more time learning about Traci than I did about driving. And as every day went by, I found out more and more how much I liked her. She was a sweet girl, full of life, who had a very easy going kind of way about her. I started looking at Drivers Ed as a daily date with Traci. I began to bring her a piece of candy each day – a Werther’s Original butterscotch. I also made sure to bring breath mints. I fixed the broken radio in C-13 with rubber bands and paper clips so she could listen to her favorite station while we drove. I even taught her how to spit on the long walk back to campus, something I’m not proud of now and thankful she never caught on to. It was in Drivers Ed that I first began to fall in love with that little redhead who Coach Jones mistakenly wrote in as “Traci Wood”. It seems now that he was a coach, teacher, and a prophet.

Traci and I have been driving partners now for fourteen years. We’ve been married for seven. We have two kids and one more on the way. And while car C-13 rusts away in some Florida junkyard, we just keep moving on. And in case you were wondering Coach, you picked a good one – a good wife, a good friend, a good mother. Good job, Jonesy!

Happy Mother’s Day, Baby! Still Looking Forward to the Road Ahead…

Kevin