Learning to Drive

The teenager has passed her driver's licence test, and is now equipped with the driving kit.  A DVD, log book and several user guides, but no straight jacket for instructors, or even anti lead foot ballet shoes for the newbie drivers.

We watched the DVD, and I reversed out the garage and drove down to the local supermarket car park.  After a few short moments of orientation against our required checklist, we were off.  That's right, we burned rubber for at least 1 cm before promptly stalling.  The good think about teaching is that apparently repetition is good.  Phew, because the 1000 other stalling episodes are bound to make us all awesome....at stalling and restarting the car!

There was clearly a rare moment of teenager enlightenment, when the realisation came that us adults make this driving thing look way easier than it actually is.  We drove 5 km of car park laps in total, but the first few laps were far from pretty.  It wasn't long before driving in a semi straight line was achieved, in first gear.  The confidence grew quickly, so we moved into indicating before turning the corners, and trying to get into second gear. 

There is some small fortune in that the car we were driving was not mine, and many moments of my life flashing before my eyes, and my little heart racing faster than the rev of the engine.  How on earth we missed that trolley rack I will never know, but I am sure that the bright orange paintwork on the rack would not have looked like a racing stripe down the side of the black Honda, and maybe even my sister would have spotted that one!

Towards the end of our hour some local cars were in the car park, so there was also a humbling moment of OMG DO I HAVE TO GIVE WAY...WHO GOES...DO I MOVE NOW....%$#$# THE CAR HAS STOPPED AGAIN.  The locals were great, smiles and waves all round from the other drivers.  The pedestrian family, complete with pram and four kids were not so understanding, and I did see the panic in the eyes of the mother who doubled back to grab the last straggling child.  Perhaps she had seen some of our bunny hopping, weaving from afar!

Just to ensure that we maintain some lightness about it all, at the end of the session I jumped out and laid on the car park, thanking our wonderful lord for letting me survive.  She did pretty well, and my style certainly worked better than her mum trying to teach her.  So now we have a new system, a night of babysitting for an hour's driving lessons.  It works out to be cheaper on my pocket, but not so sure about my nerves!