Yesterday?

It’s kind of a shame that social media wasn’t a thing when I was a teenager, because I’m pretty sure I don’t have anything to look back on that would tell me when I got my drivers license. There might be a reference to passing my test in an old journal, but that seems unlikely. At best, maybe it would be in a chat log on an ancient computer I no longer have in my possession. As I’m thinking back on it, I know that I took the test in the summer, probably in 2001, maybe as late as 2002. I waited as long as I could manage to actually take my drivers test. I waited so long that I ended up having to get my learners permit re-issued because it expired.

I hated everything about learning how to drive. When I was 14, my dad drove us back to a secluded county road and had me get in the drivers seat to practice. In retrospect, I don’t know how I managed to move the vehicle an inch, let alone drive down the road. The worst part, was when we came to an intersection and he told me I needed to make a right turn. Except that the only things I’d driven previously had very tiny steering wheels, and apparently full-sized car steering wheels require a bit more rotation (and speed) in order to initiate a turn correctly. I think I maybe got us around that corner and then declared myself done, because there was no way I was going to drive on the paved highway that would take us home.

At 15, I took the written test as a sort of rite of passage with everyone else in my class who was eligible (because at that point, taking a drivers training course was a quarter-long class offered at my high school, and at the end of it, someone would come up and let us sit for the written exam). Somewhere, in that initial year of my learners permit, I took the required 10 hours of driving instruction with an official instructor, and then… I’m not really sure what happened.

It’s not like I didn’t practice driving, because that definitely was a thing that I did. Did I practice parallel parking or corner backing? Nope. Did I practice coming to a complete stop at a stop sign? Definitely not. Did I drive a vehicle without one of my parents in the passenger seat? Yes, on multiple occasions, all of them very much against my will, hating every second of it.

I’d say that actually taking my behind the wheel test is as close as I’ve come to being dragged into something kicking and screaming. It started off poorly, because my parents didn’t have a copy of our vehicle’s insurance in the car. We spent 20 minutes getting someone to fax a copy of it to the DMV, by which time I’d already had a meltdown about how I didn’t need “to learn how to do this, I’m going to move somewhere that has trains and I’ll take the bus.” So, all of that hung over me while I finally took the test and didn’t do a good job of visibly looking both ways at intersections, or coming to a complete stop, or managing to do anything that resembled a decent parallel parking or corner backing maneuver. And I failed.

I think my dad thought it was going to be a “get back on the horse” course of action, by running an errand after my failed test and leaving me in the car with the directive that I would be driving us home and he expected me to be in the drivers seat when he came back. I spent the eternity of that errand mentally wrestling with myself about what to do, because I failed by driving the way I watched him drive for my whole life, and now I was going to have to get behind the wheel and do more (to me, utterly pointless) driving? I’m not sure I’d completely committed to the idea of never driving again, but I certainly didn’t want to drive anymore that day.

I was wearing nice shoes, shoes that wouldn’t have been good for walking. So, I entertained the idea of going over to Target and spending whatever was left in my wallet on a pair of crappy canvas shoes and a bottle of water and then just walking home. Home was over 25 miles away. It was late afternoon, so I’m not sure how long it would have taken for me to arrive at my destination. I still think about that sometimes. What would have happened if I’d done that? What would my dad have thought, walking up to the car and finding it empty; me, nowhere in sight?

Instead, I was in the drivers seat, and I drove us home. I’m not sure how the steering wheel didn’t melt from the inferno of rage coursing through me. I can still feel it now. The impotence of it all, just boiling inside of me, with no way to release it.

There’s a nice ending to this story. I went back for another 2 hours with an actual instructor who got me through parallel parking and corner backing, and then I somehow aced my test with the same examiner as my previously failed one. He didn’t even dock me for points after I painstakingly waited for someone at a crosswalk who wasn’t going, and wasn’t going, and then totally started crossing the second I decided to take my turn at the intersection.

But, I’ve never really shed the big “what if?” of the hour after I failed. It’s such a weirdly immature regret to have, that I didn’t just throw a total tantrum and basically run away for a few hours. Part of me wishes I’d been that committed to just never learning how to drive. It would have been wildly inconvenient, especially living where I do now, where having a car is pretty much a necessity to live and work. At least maybe I would have gotten someone to say “you’ve made your point” and we could all have moved on from there.

As failures go, it was probably a good time to have started doing poorly at things, considering how often I coasted through things before then. A nice preparation for adulthood where suddenly actual planning and effort is required, and I couldn’t depend on either cramming the night before, or having a subject just be easy for me. In retrospect, that’s probably when a lot of things did start to get more difficult, so it was really good timing.

It’s weird what stays with you. Part of me wants this memory to be a triumph, because I did manage to do so well when I re-took the test. But if I had it to do over again… I’d rather not fail. I’d rather not have been crying and upset in the minutes before taking the test, and feeling so angry in the hours after. I’d rather have been more prepared. At least I can still learn lessons from my 16 or 17 year-old self.