The only things I can remember about my first driving instructor were that he smoked during lessons – in the passenger seat, but with the window down – and that his son was on attempted murder charges.
The trial was scheduled for around the same time I was to take my driving test.
Closer to the date we got, the tension in the car became unbearable: “I still can’t parallel park!” “What if my son gets jailed?” “I’m not ready for the test!” “I’m not ready for the trial.”
I got my licence in 2000, drove for two years, then didn’t drive again – until now.
In those two years I drove mainly in the deep country – places with dirt roads, no traffic lights or roundabouts, where my fellow road users were long-distance truckers.
The times I did venture into more built-up areas I had accidents. Changing a Silverchair tape, I rammed into the back of a French tourist in a Hertz rental car. Hertz would later bill me for $10,000, which I paid off in instalments. I was uninsured.
Friends accepting lifts would come out of their houses wearing bike helmets. People took photos of my avant-garde angle parking – if they knew me they would laugh, if they didn’t they would get angry.
Being a shit driver is not funny, I know. So I stopped driving as soon as I moved somewhere with decent public transport. I sold my car to a local pizza restaurant. It was distinctive – a red Holden Barina, crushed at the front – like I’d rammed a bollard. In the country, people know you and track you by your car. There were sightings of me everywhere: multiple times daily at the local pothead’s house, at the homes of my old teachers, at the football club and police station late at night. “What were you doing at Mad Pete’s house. I saw your car parked there,” worried acquaintances would ask, thinking I’d taken up with the local drug dealer. “It’s not me!” I would say. “It’s my car. Delivering pizza, my car is delivering pizza – but I’m not!”
I left the town and the battered car and didn’t drive a car again until this year. I’m part-time in the country. There’s no public transport, no Uber and it sucks. I open Uber on my phone and it’s the saddest thing ever: there are NO CARS, the map is blank. There may as well be a notification that says: “The nearest Uber is 300 minutes away.”
It was time to drive again. “Just give it to me! I had it before!” I tell the lady at VicRoads. But because I’d allowed my licence to lapse for more than a decade, I had to repeat the process. Including getting my Ls.
Is there any book more boring than the L’s book? All summer I read the fascinating story of a car that stopped at a level crossing for three seconds, and waited behind trams while passenger alighted and gave way to vehicles turning left.
But a lot had changed since I last took the exam. Bike lanes – what? School zones – huh?
The L’s book was nothing compared with the combined terror and tedium of my first mature-age driving lesson.
I was shocked when two minutes after meeting the instructor, she handed me the keys and instructed me to drive her car from the car park on to the road. A busy road. You want me to what?? Drive on the road? It was too soon. I thought we might go to a paddock or I could WATCH you drive …
I drove. It was horrible. And boring. I was uncomfortable with any traffic whatsoever (my ideal driving conditions are where I am the ONLY car on the road), I sped through school zones, I didn’t know my left from right, I stopped so hard that we were both branded with seatbelt marks, I kept turning on the windscreen wipers when I should have been indicating, I was so frightened of other cars, I wouldn’t merge and so we’d run out of road.
“You’re scratchy,” was all she said at the end.
After our second lesson she announced she was retiring.
“So I’ll see you next week?”
“Actually, I’m retiring.”
“What?”
“Yes, that’s it for me.”
Really?
My next instructor has stuck with me for four lessons now. We had a lesson yesterday. She says I’m scratchy. That word again! What does it really mean?? She also sticks her head out the window when I’m driving and yells, “Watch out dickhead!” to warn pedestrians that I am coming.
I ask her the question that all of us learner drivers want to know. “When will I be ready?”
“July. Maybe.”
July!! That is like a million years away.
“You can’t reverse,” she says. “You can’t park. You don’t know your road rules. You have a problem with speed.”
It’s going to be a long year.
La La? Nah nah
I saw La La Land last week (SPOILER ALERT) and struggle to see what is feel-good about this film. I’ve felt more uplifted watching a Ken Loach movie. After La La Land, I left the cinema feeling depressed – it’s surely the least romantic movie ever made. They choose work over love! I know that a lot of people end up breaking up with The One because their jobs take them in different directions, but having this happen in a romance movie is grim. A jazz club can’t hug you when you’re down, and your face on a movie poster won’t keep you warm at night.
