Li’l Bit tries to get Peck to open up about his World War II experiences, but he resists. The waiter looks on disapprovingly, but Peck pays him off with a big tip. He orders her oysters and martinis, the latter of which she knocks back one after another despite being underage. Peck is treating Li’l Bit for passing her driving test first time. The next flashback takes place in a fancy restaurant in 1968. Present-day L’il Bit then reveals that she flunked out of school because she was drinking too much and spent the rest of that time period driving through the night. As Li’l Bit storms outside, Peck comes out to comfort her. Li’l Bit is determined to get a good education, which the male chorus says she isn’t going to need. Her grandfather, played by the male chorus, makes lewd jokes about the size of her breasts. This scene breaks to show a typical family dinner in Li’l Bit’s household. He does so as a “reward’ for being a “good boy”-based on the fact that he hasn’t drunk any alcohol for a week. Peck touches and kisses Li’l Bit’s breasts, though she is reluctant and especially aware that she has an important day at school the following day. She and Peck are in Peck’s car on a dark lane in Maryland. Explaining that “sometimes to tell a secret, you first have to teach a lesson,” she introduces the first flashback, which takes place in 1969 when she is seventeen.

The play opens with the present-day Li’l Bit setting the scene. An official-sounding voice marks the transition between the scenes, using the kind of headings found in driving instruction. Other than the two characters already mentioned, the play employs three “Greek choruses”- teenage, female, and male-to jump between the roles of a wide range of people that populate Li’l Bit’s recollections. The play works in a non-linear way, using flashbacks, monologues and a heightened sense of the surreal to show how Li’l Bit relates to her memory and trauma. How I Learned to Drive tells the story of Li’l Bit, now a woman of around thirty-five years, coming to terms with the abusive and emotionally complex relationship that she had with her Uncle Peck.

What is how i learned to drive about