You are a good confident driver. You rule this road. Look at you… you even look cool.
Last summer my sister began learning how to drive. Being the one with the most flexibility and free time, I had the pleasure of being in the passenger’s seat, gripping the door, eyes, wide, teeth clenched, often reverting to saying words on repeat simply to get my message across. Stop Stop Stop Stop Stop. Go right go right go right. Slowdownslowdownslowdown!
Every time she got behind the wheel she would fervently say her mantra,
You are a good confident driver. You rule this road. Look at you… you even look cool
sometimes going on with variations of it for five minutes or more. Not only was it entertaining to hear, but it was pretty darn true. She was confident. She was safe. She was aware. She looked cool. I’m sure I had a much more stress-free time being a driving coach than my poor mama did with me.
Let me be honest here,
Me + car = 70% disaster + 30% success
Putting me in a car to drive is not the best idea. I’m tensed up the whole time freaked out that something’s going to happen because more often than not, it does. It’s a ravenous cycle. Thinking about it, I partially credit that to never wanting to get behind the wheel in the first place. One of my cousins was killed by a drunk driver, I had a scarring nightmare one night where my grandmother and I crashed off a bridge and died, and right before I learned how to drive, the mother of my brother’s friend was walking one evening and was hit by a car. She died. Needless to say cars petrified me… I had no desire to unintentionally kill or be killed. I should also mention at this time that
1) I got to learn how to drive a stick shift which increased the amount of stall outs and running into things like poles and other cars and…
2) The New Mexican driving system sucks. I never took a road tes,t yet they sent me a certificate saying I passed it with a 100%. That was probably a poor poor mistake on their part.
I mean, my first year of driving, I was called out of class a couple of times because one time I left the car running and another time I forgot to put the emergency brake on and it rolled across the parking lot and hit another girl’s snazzy car. Then of course there was college where I had an annual holiday-time record of losing a side mirror on my dad’s property. One time I backed out into the pole in my dad’s shed and the other time I slid on some ice into a tree. Fortunately but unfortunately, my brother broke that streak the third winter when his band’s speakers shattered the back window.
I’ve gotten a speeding ticket for trying to get from Ithaca, NY to Chicopee, MA in 4 hours instead of 6 hours. I’ve slid violently into a guardrail driving through a snowstorm on shitty tires. I’ve gotten a flat tire driving in a borrowed car to Starbucks. Those are all stories unto themselves, but the point is, I should never have a car. Unlike my sister, I‘m a shitty, unconfident, cursed by my own fault driver.
What was your experience like learning how to drive?
1 comment:
Best part of learning to drive. The first time I went somewhere with my parents after getting my permit we were driving up to northern Michigan. We stop at a rest area to pee and we are headed back to the car when my dad says I think it is your turn to drive. Thanks dad for giving me the whole on ramp before I have to expressway drive. So I role out on the expressway merge into traffic, my hands loyally at ten and ten, when my mom, who is sitting in the middle seat of the pickup, goes "Hey so and so lives over there!" and points wildly a crossed my face. I maintain that my lack of getting in an accident that day should have been an entire road test on its own.
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