Driving

This April, I’ll be participating in the A to Z Blogging Challenge, where I’ll write an entry a day centered on my theme of Memoir. I’ll be using  Old Friend from Far Away by Natalie Goldberg as my inspiration for my daily topic. Each post will be a quick write (about 10-20 minutes) to help me notice and remember.

D is for Driving

Let’s talk about driving. How did you learn? What kind of driver are you?

Learning to drive was an ordeal. At first my parents decided to save money by teaching me themselves, but after many failed attempts and screaming matches that ended in tears, they forked over the money for driving school. We were all so much happier that someone else was teaching me to drive.

I remember getting my driver’s license in 1997, when I was sixteen years old, but unlike most of my friends, I didn’t get it on my birthday. Due to the driving school debacle, I received it several months later, which at the time, was utterly embarrassing. Looking back now, who really cares when I got it? A few months doesn’t make much of a difference.

My first car was a dark gray 1991 Ford Mustang 4-cylinder hatchback with very low mileage. Having to earn the money to buy my first car was so unfair to sixteen year old me, but I’ll admit, once I had saved up the $4,000 to buy it, I was very proud of myself. Plus, it was a Mustang, which was super cool back then.

As a young driver, I got into quite a few wrecks, the first being with my best friend Nicole, when we were joy riding around in the neighborhood behind our high school one night and I ran a stop sign, hitting another car in the intersection, causing them to spin a few times and land their car in someone’s front yard. Luckily no one was hurt, but it was not my finest moment. When the police and my parents showed up, I was in a lot of trouble. I’m not sure how long I was grounded for, but it had to be at least a few weeks or a month.

The next two wrecks in the Mustang happened a few months later, coincidentally on the same day! After school, I was driving near the high school when a car turned left across traffic and hit my car, damaging the front fender. After dinner, I drove back to school for an NHS meeting, only to get hit again by a student driver who backed up into my car in the parking lot, damaging the front bumper. When I came home later that night, I remember saying to my dad, “Guess what happened tonight?”, to which he replied, “You got in another wreck!” “How’d you know?” I asked. He actually didn’t know; he was making a joke, but was shocked that it had happened again.

In the years following my first year as a driver, I would get into numerous wrecks, but luckily none were too serious. I earned a reputation as a bad driver, and as much as I tried to dispute it, I didn’t have a leg to stand on. I eventually grew out of the poor driver phase, and became more confident behind the wheel.