On Driving

I recently passed the ever-fearsome Driver's Test. It was a lot like slaying a dragon, except that instead of a sword I had car keys, and instead of a cool wizard mentor I had a test administrator that spoke in a monotone, and there was no dragon and I kind of wished there was because then I wouldn't have had to take the test. While I was thinking in run-on sentence metaphors, I managed to pass by one Very Important Point. So woo-hoo.

If you've known me for any significant length of time, then you probably know that I have an extreme (and pathological) fear of driving. This phobia took root after my first driving class, which consisted of a multiple-choice packet that went over traffic laws and a lot of YouTube videos of very, very bad car crashes. 

It's been about a week-ish since I passed the test, so I think I can be considered something of a driving expert now. And I discovered a lot of lies that my driving instructors told me in that class. 

For example, parallel parking. This is one that I'm pretty sure everyone's aware of. Parallel parking reminds me of parabolas. Both of them are things that you are required to know about, but you will encounter them pretty rarely in your life unless you are in very specific situations. In the case of parabolas, those situations involve Angry Birds and/or being a super smart mathematical genius. With parallel parking, it involves the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity you will have in your mid-thirties to take your 2.5 children to the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and stand too far away to actually see anything, freezing your butt off in New York's autumnal chill. Suffice it to say that I know people who have been alive since television was in black and white who have never used parallel parking once in their entire careers on the road. 

Another thing I was told was that essentially every time I passed an entrance to a gas station or a grocery store, people were going to zoom out in front of me and cut me off. That has not happened. I know that it can happen. I'm very, very aware of the insane people on the road in Oklahoma. But for the most part, everyone on the road has been very polite and waited for me to go by. I'll admit that I'm still pleasantly surprised every time I go through an intersection or a four-way stop and discover that no one has suddenly made the decision to ram into my car for no reason. 

Also, signaling. Nobody signals except for me and that one old lady who left her signal on for twelve blocks and drove eight miles an hour under the speed limit in front of me on the way to school last Thursday. What is up with that? I mean, come on. Those fancy buttons are part of the reason you paid so much money for that car. What was the point of that if you don't use them? 

One thing I wished I'd been warned about is how easy it is to get lost when you first start out driving. Maybe it's just me, but I've already had to call my parents to bail me out of wrong turns and streets-too-far at least four times. And before anyone tells me to use my GPS, I'll have you know that I got lost because of mine, and yes I put the address in correctly, I think I am perfectly capable of holding up the human end of the bargain when it comes to a GPS, so you can put that in your pipe and smoke it Boy Scouts of America. 

Well, I haven't died yet. So there's that.