Learning to Drive

Chronicles of an American Yogi

Coming of age in the 1980’s meant learning to drive a stick shift.
I find it so curious that today’s youth has such disinterest in getting their driver’s license because for me, it was ultimate freedom!
But it wasn’t a freedom that came easy.

If I were to claim a phobia in high school, it would be taking tests and my greatest phobia of all time was taking the driving test. My entire identity was based on being a DRIVER which then, in turn, would make me the ADULT that I so yearned to be.

The written test was breeze, I only missed one question:
If you’re driving down an open highway and see a car entering on the right from the on-ramp you… (choose one below)
(a) Speed up
(b) Slow down
(c) Move to the left lane

I put (a) but the correct answer is (c).
I thought speeding up was the answer to all problems.

My father took months to teach me to drive. I felt VERY confident when I was driving with him on Sundays in a local high school parking lot. Taking the actual driving test, however, made me feel petrified.

It didn’t help that the instructor conducting the test was a particularly grumpy old man with a grimace on his face who looked like he hadn’t had a good day in a couple decades. Yet the test went surprisingly well, that is until we got back to the parking lot and he asked me to back into a parking space. I had practiced my parallel parking over and over again, but no one told me I’d have to back up into a space!

The long and short of it:
I failed.
The devastation was real.
It was probably the first thing I had utterly failed at in my short life.
I was totally humiliated.

The problem wasn’t my driving skills, ultimately the problem was my fear.
My fear of failure was so strong that it became my reality. I didn’t know then about ego and identity. I just wanted to be cool.

I decided to take Driver’s Ed through school during the winter months and told myself I felt better being trained by a real teacher and not just my dad. A few months later I headed back to the Department of Motor Vehicles to give it another try.

Don’t you know I got that same grumpy driving instructor? And he remembered me! He said, “No need to take the written portion over again, let’s go back into a parking space.” My first attempt was just a little off, one side was closer than the other. The second time it got worse and the third time I almost caused an accident because of my panic.

Then that grumpy old guy’s faced changed. He wasn’t grimacing anymore. He wasn’t angry either. Instead he suddenly became kind, even patient and truly compassionate. He probably understood my problem even better than I knew it myself. He said he would pass me if I practiced backing in parking spaces until I had mastered it.

It was a bona fide miracle in my book.
And I did exactly what he asked of me. Today I can back up into any parking space with ease, sometimes with more speed than is entirely necessary.