DRIVING LESSON: PART ONE
One of my very favourite photos with Ron is not actually with
Ron, although he took it. It’s of me…sitting behind the wheel of his
beloved and beautiful:
Black…
Shiny…
Four door…
Ultra cool…
Dice dangling…( a gift from me because his mom wouldn’t let him have them as she deemed gambling to be a sin)
Mustang convertible.
With the top down.
With six gorgeous Mustang horses galloping on the chrome front and the steering wheel and all four hubcaps believe me if we got nothing else…we got horse power!!
Mind you I do not have a valid license, I did have one but foolishly and forgetfully let it expire.
Forgot it because after months of lessons and one or two failed driving tests and one extensive trip alone….I abandoned the entire project that had really started many years before.
Going back…waaaaayyy back…
I was always the one who did things with my father that my brother was afraid to do. Like the roller coaster…which I hated but since Daniel would flat out not go on it I volunteered. Same with ice skating. I was terrified I would fall and someone would then run over me and cut off my hand or my head with their blade as I have no balance and my feet would freeze no matter how insulated…but my father wanted to go so…so I volunteered.
But these were activities that really needed no instruction. Just a deeply held breath and a conviction that I was probably going to die but just could not disappoint my father and besides I wanted to show up my brother.
But learning to drive was a whole other matter.
Daniel did want to drive, and my father sort of instructed him. Sort of because being a boy Daniel knew all about cars already. Things like where the brake is and the gas and all the buttons. The rules he read about. So there was nothing my father really had to do except be in the car with him after he got his learner's permit and also during the formal driving test.
That’s where things got interesting.
My father was in the back and my brother must have turned around to exchange a few words with him. The tester then made the mistake of either saying something derogatory or making fun of my father’s deaf voice and my brother then told him to get the hell out of the car. After apologising profusely he was allowed to stay and when the test was over he stamped the permit as passed and got out.
My father never knew anything about this as he could not hear what was going on in the front seat. And of course my brother never told him.
We never told him anything we didn’t have to anyway as we were very protective of both parents.
That’s just the way it was.
My own weird adventures in driving and somehow surviving coming up in Part 2….
Good descriptions: the mighty Mustang, the likelihood of getting a limb sliced off by a passing skater ~ and then the painful episode with the test guy. The part about protecting the parents, that's just how it was, a new piece of the family picture.
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