LEARNING TO DRIVE

Driving With My Son — a Halloween Story

My son’s arrogance comes in handy as he ‘learns’ to drive

When my son turned 17, he began learning to drive. This was a worrying moment because of course teenage boys do a lot of crashing. However, I can’t see him ever being a boy racer. He is very slow.

He is so slow in fact that he is much quicker on rollerblades, his preferred mode of transport. A guy on a motorbike drove alongside him once and clocked him in at 22 mph, he rarely reaches 20 mph in a car.

He has lessons with an instructor who is so cautious over his ability behind the wheel that for weeks he would drive him to a place where he could practice turning left for an hour, round and round. Slowly. (left being easier, the UK equivalent of most countries right turn ‘Clyde’)

My son likes to stay in low gears. First ideally, two reluctantly and he’s pretty opposed to third gear altogether. I don’t think the fourth or fifth have been touched yet. He’s not a natural behind the wheel, but he is determined.

I will just say in his defence, in case there are a lot of people reading this from North America, driving here is a lot harder. Stick-shift cars require clutch control for a start. Watch the opening of ‘Pretty Woman’ with Richard Gere making a mess of that, to get an idea.

Then there are hills. Not that there aren’t hills and mountains and cliffs in America, but you can drive much of it without ever worrying about a hill start. When we hired an RV in Florida so our son could pretend to be Ben Ten, the woman refused to show me what half the things did, “You won’t need those.” They were all to do with going up hills. Balancing your accelerator with your clutch peddle and releasing your hand break at just the right time so you don’t stall, roll backwards into a car, or shoot into traffic that hasn’t cleared yet, is a real challenge.

That was complicated enough writing down let alone doing it. I can’t wait until we all switch to automatics. Why didn’t we decades ago?

And then there’s how busy it is and how impatient drivers are here. I would always beat other cars in America off a junction at lights, no one else seemed to care. And in remote country I’ve sat behind drivers waiting for minutes, well it feels like at least a minute, for distant headlights to pass, rather than pulling out and having them behind you. America may be the home of the car chase but in reality, it’s a lot of straight roads with drivers in no hurry to get anywhere.

Add in tiny car-lined streets, built before anyone had heard of the automobile, and my wife and I’s anxiety feels well founded.

She though, has been super brave and gone out with him in her car. She comes back shaken with a host of hilarious stories, but alive. Our son, as nonchalant as ever, blames everyone else for his stalling, his stopping in the middle of the road blocking traffic and the occasional minor bump.

I had only watched him drive out of the car park but not experienced firsthand the rigours of driving with him. That is until last Sunday.

My wife had the brilliant idea that he should drive back after church, with me in the back. It went like this…

In first gear he sauntered the 200 yards to the first lights. When it turned green he slowly got moving and a white van honked at him from behind.

In the middle of the crossroads confusion set in as my wife’s instructions on where to go hadn’t actually specifically specified ‘straight on’ but just ‘keep going ahead’! I wanted desperately to interfere from the back seat and give clearer instructions, but my wise head got the better of me and I shut my mouth before I was told to shut it!

We crawled around an awkward right angle which IS your right of way, but doesn’t feel it, then reached the next junction, one with no lights this time. He had to pull out into the traffic, and it can be a bit busy there. He stalled, stalled again — this is the engine dying due to the lack of that clutch control. Cars whizzed past in front of us, cars sat behind us. They were patient this time, no horns, although I hate to think what curses they were sending us telepathically.

The Catholic congregation was just getting out and they obviously hadn’t got the memo to stay in church for another five minutes and so began crossing the road ahead. Has anyone played the computer game Crossy Roads? Well, it was like that except we were the car that gets you. Well almost.

My wife controlled the first hill start of the short journey by handling the hand break for him. This meant no catastrophic rolling backwards into innocent citizens but did mean he messed up the clutch thing again, about three times. Every time he does, he has a little think, a relax and a cup of tea. He might as well have a cup of tea anyway; he feels no urgency to clear the backlog behind him.

The rest of the way home was smooth sailing — he’s better at sailing too! The only issues were a lot more first-gear driving, people having to overtake him, and I swear he said, “Bloody women drivers!” Though he denies it!

He pulled in so close to my car that I had to get out the opposite side. Not a problem for him though as he’s so thin and lanky. “Dad, see, you’re too fat.”

Despite enough going wrong to put anyone off sitting behind the wheel ever again, he didn’t seem to care, he’d be driving the next day. Oh, the arrogance of youth!

Give me some of that arrogance, please. At least when he’s driving.

A story from the other end of his childhood

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