May 27, 2006
Oh jeez, I totally have the fear smell. I have the fear smell mixed with the Euraka driving schools student driver car smell.
To divert from the smell issue, the driving school car looks like it has been rolled in a bag of week-old french-fries. I am no stranger to dirt. I live with two animals and I am not really a shelf-lining, bleach under the sink at all times having, girl. But still, I have standards, however low, and that car did not in any way, shape or form live up to them.
On top of the fear smell, and the memory of car-dirt on my legs. There is the equally problematic memory of Claude, my genial if grubby driving instructors BO smell. A BO smell which quickly turned into fear smell as he realized that I am going to drive like a bat-shit-crazy old lady probably forever and there is nothing he nor anyone else can do about it.
HOLY CRAP DRIVING IS SCARY. How are any of us safe out there? Driving a car is like trying to negotiate the world with a 100-foot wide piece of metal strapped to your waist. Oh no wait, that 's exactly what it is. Only the damn thing has an engine.
Areas which need improvement:
Accelerating
Stopping
Turning
Going straight
Slowing down
Speeding up
The only thing which needs no improvement is my capacity to imagine terrible accidents where everyone involved ends up horribly disfigured and angry and the accident scene is a towering inferno of auto-damage. And of course, it's all my fault.
Question:
- How do you pay attention to all that crap, kids on bikes, pregnant ladies, flowers, dogs, ice-cream trucks, fucking a-hole montreal drivers who swerve around you just because you happen to be coming to a kinda slow stop on a four way stop sign with no oncoming traffic from any direction..
Okay, the real reason I should just turn in my learners permit right now and resign my self to a life of public transportation and passenger seats...
I wore flip-flops to my lesson.
Continued from main page..
Posted by Miriam at May 27, 2006 6:26 PM
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mir, keep going, you are the dream of those of us who could hear streetcars from our houses growing up and maybe still name our bikes and wonder how the hell we're going to find the time to learn how to drive in between doing laundry and working and washing the dishes.
just think ... car trips ...
Road trips is how I started this whole mess.
I had this vision of waking up on beautiful crisp mornings, making a nice cafe latte and drinking it while letting my red pen trace a random line on a map of southern Quebec. Then piling the dog in the (rented) car and hitting the open road.
That all seems so far away right now ;(
In an unrelated note: The dog, princess of my life, and the one for whom I expend this enormous amount of effort - just puked a little under my desk and when I crouched down to see what the hell was going on she ate it up again quickly while giving me the guilt-eyes.
Yeah!
A laugh out loud blog, its been awhile.
The vision of you driving is amusing. I just have to say that yes driving feels very weird at first, it truly is one of those things that is about practice. I never believed I would figure out how to drive standard and now it feels natural.
Keep goiing to those lessons and then you can drive the Alaska Highway when you come to visit, as long as we avoid the laugh out louds while you are behind the wheel.
Love
Ruth