Ignore the Lines Painted on the Street and Pass a Drive Test At 30 Years Old
Learn to drive a stick shift when you live on a mountain
Sardinia, Italy, 1995
One morning, we hitch a ride to Palau, the town where we catch a boat to the island where our ship is moored, and luckily, we’re picked up not far onto the main road by the little white one-person truck an Italian drives to deliver newspapers. Daniel, not his real name, and I scrunch into the front passenger seat and get front-door service to the Bigletteria.
The world is gray and lazy this February afternoon, and I watch the masts on the sailboats in the marina creak back and forth in the wind. There’s something mystic yet adventurous and relaxing about a day like this.
It’s frigid, and the skies are heavy with bloated clouds looming over the sea, their overhanging bellies blocking our view of the mountains when we get to Palau, so we hop into a taxi and put our bikes in the trunk. Daniel promises we’ll make up for it by riding Saturday and Sunday to Santa Teresa and back.
Better than riding our bikes, says Daniel
We’ve bought a manual transmission Subaru, and I drive home for the first time, in lieu of riding our bikes for the 8-mile trek. Living at the top of a mountain in a remote area of a town with a population of 60 on an island in a foreign country that most people in America have never heard of probably wasn’t the best place to reside.
Add this to that the fact that I barely speak the language, the winding roads have no road signs, and I’ve never driven a vehicle with a stick shift previously.
Daniel is with me but doesn’t know how to drive a manual either, so he is no help. I attempt to drive to the Exchange, but he tells me how to drive properly, which makes me so nervous that I keep stalling. I finally give up, turn around and drive home. I feel sick again, so a bike ride is out of the question.
Over the weekend, I walk to the back of our house to where our landlord lives and explain, “I’ve recently noticed the oil in my car is empty, and the muffler needs to be patched, replaced, or something because it’s making a God-awful noise. Can you possibly call your mechanic? I would appreciate it. He was wonderful last time.”
“Of course; we can drive over to him right now.”
Daniel stays home and cleans while I leave with her. We stand outside, the wind tousles our hair, and the sun beats down while we wait for their trusted mechanic to arrive. She asks how Daniel and I met, how I ended up in the military, and whether I plan to stay in.
I explain everything regarding my job and what my Navy plans are. I delicately maneuver my way around directly answering any questions about Daniel. She shares how she and her husband met and what their courtship was like. I smile but cry inside, envious of a happy courtship filled with love and hopeful excitement about a future with someone.
My brilliant move of buying a stick shift reveals itself when I attempt to drive home numerous nights, stalling and frequently rolling backward on steep roads. My fellow Italians are not pleased with my new purchase. I learn colorful new words and phrases in Italian and which hand gestures to use for each.
Connecticut, 1997
Obtaining one’s driver’s license is a rite of passage for many, especially in certain states where a person must go through driver’s training and pass a written exam before the elusive license is granted.
Once the shiny plastic is bestowed upon an individual, it is usually welcomed as an exciting achievement. It is often viewed as an opportunity for freedom to venture further from home to discover what the world has to offer. My first husband, Daniel, never got a license before he joined the military. His upbringing contributed to that. I earned my international license and drove us everywhere when we lived in Italy.
Once we move to Connecticut, I continue driving. When our son, Neal, is a baby, Daniel finally decides to obtain his license. On the morning of his driving test, I’m terrified to strap Neal into the backseat and climb into the passenger side to help Daniel practice driving.
He drives to the empty parking lot just before the DMV and practices backing in since his driving instructor and the booklet say that will undoubtedly be part of the driving test.
The more he tries, the worse he gets, and the last 5 or 6 times, he pulls our car directly over the white line. He demands I open my car door to see how close he is to being in the center of the parking space and that he’s straight.
I lean out and ask, “Um…which space were you going for?” Once again, the middle of the car straddles two spaces, and the line is directly underneath the vehicle.
Each time he pulls in, he grows increasingly frustrated and angry, yells, pounds the steering wheel, and curses. I’ve offered to help him study on numerous occasions, have offered to let him drive many times, and have been waiting for him to get his license since I met him, but he’s never been willing to try.
He pulls into the DMV lot to use the public restroom, which they don’t have, so this infuriates him further, and he bounces and jiggles about in his seat the whole way to Wal-Mart, telling me, “I’m gonna piss my pants; I have to pee so bad!”
It’s hard enough not to laugh at his whole-hearted efforts to back in; now things are getting funnier by the minute, I refrain. Neal is sleeping, so the two of us wait in the hot sun while Daniel takes the written part of the exam.
“I missed the maximum four out of sixteen questions, so I barely passed,” he says.
I unload Neal and his diaper bag from the car and go inside, where it’s comfortably cool but uncomfortably crowded.
He’s back from the driving portion of the test within fifteen minutes and, ridiculous as it may sound, has a license.
He’s shocked, too, and explains, “I totally lucked out; the instructor was in a hurry, didn’t even notice if I was doing any of the pre-driving things I was supposed to do, and didn’t make me back in or park anywhere. I’m so glad; I was so nervous.”
How scary.
I was inspired to write this when I read Eunice Rabert Hernández’s hilarious, entertaining, inspiring story: