How I Learned to Drive

In a monologue, an adult Li’l Bit tells the audience that she intends to tell a secret and must first start with a lesson. The lesson begins on a “warm summer evening” (9) in a parking lot in Maryland.  

In 1969, Li’l Bit is 17 years old, and “very old, very cynical of the world” (9). As she climbs into the car with Uncle Peck, husband of her Aunt Mary, he moans, telling her he loves how her hair smells and asking her what kind of shampoo she uses so he can get into the bathtub with a bottle of it. When she interrupts him, telling him to “[b]e good” (10), he says he is only going to wash his hair with it and asks what she thought he was going to do. 

Peck says he’s been “good” and asks when Li’l Bit is “gonna let [him] show [her] how good” he is (10). He asks if he can undo her bra; she tells him to “be quick about it” (11) and is impressed that he can undo it one-handedly through her blouse. Uncle Peck says her prom date would need her help. 

Peck asks if he can kiss her breasts; when she hesitates, he says, “Don’t make a grown man beg” (11).