"
people always say "it's really easy, there's a simple formula. you just turn it clockwise half way and then turn it the other way until it won't turn anymore and then look in your mirror twice and turn the wheel a quarter turn and and and"
"
My roommate has made it to almost 30 without learning to drive. Or perhaps he has learned and forgotten. Maybe he has a secret license he has been hiding from us.
I think I can beat him. But I'm only 22 now, 23 tomorrow, actually, so that's only 6 or 7 more years without being behind the wheel that I have to get by. That's somewhere between a quarter and a third of the life I have lived so far. It will somewhere between a fifth and a quarter of the life I will have lived at that point.
There was one time my father decided it was time for me to learn. I was already older than the average American teenager engineering his escape pod, courtesy of having attended a boarding school. In fact, my dad decided it was time because I had just graduated from high school.
My family was helping me move from New Jersey to Ohio for college, but we had to make a stop in Tennessee to pick up the old Toyota (or was it a Honda?) that they had bought for my grandparents to use almost a decade before. My mother was the type of person to stock up the top shelf of one our closets with various gifts, just in case. So when that kid in my class that I didn't really know or like invited me to his birthday party out of nowhere, my mom was ready with some wrapping paper. Or maybe we got invited to some kind of housewarming party. The shelf got a little emptier before the light turned off and we closed the door.
So it was really no surprise that she had masterminded a scheme in which my parents bought my grandparents a car to drive around in, with the hopes that I would drive it 10 years later when I was old enough, and my grandparents were too old (and in all actuality, it was only my grandfather anyway, since my grandmother, stricken with glaucoma and osteoporosis, preferred to putter around the house, stocking up Apple Jacks and Mello Yello for my impending summer visits). With me having graduated, the plan was simple: drive down with my family to Tennessee from New Jersey, pick up the Tonda (or was it Hoyota?) and drive up to Ohio from there with two cars, one which they could leave with me.
Maybe they hadn't counted on me not having a license yet. Nothing that couldn't be fixed though. Driving's easy. Tennessee is pretty sparse. My father drove me to an abandoned strip mall.
I have never been comfortable around particularly noisy mechanical things. Vacuuming was a chore. And airplane toilets were absolutely terrifying; I would be halfway out of the folding doors before I flushed the toilet. It wasn't even as if I feared being sucked through it or something, and in fact, that might have made the idea a bit more appealing. Blenders? Also terrifying, but my love for smoothies generally wins out.
The car was not particularly noisy, but feeling the herds of horsepower on the other side of my foot had the same unsettling effect. After all, it is not a far cry from stepping on hot coals, and maybe I even felt a bit like that one scene in Dr. Strangelove, riding that hot and bothered machine into certain doom.
I didn't take the car beyond 20 miles an hour.
And in retrospect, that's almost rather hilarious, as I am rather comfortable, these days, riding my bicycle around at that speed and beyond.
Perhaps my father was a little disappointed in my slow, misshapen laps around the parking lot, and thought that perhaps it was time to work on parking. I know: that pun wasn't intended. He pulled me out of the car and ran over a few basics of parking. I closed the door and my dad stood in front of the car, pretending to be a cone pretending to be another car. I began to ease the car into the parking space and crept forward until my dad jumped out of the way, pushing on the hood.
In retrospect, "crept" might have a bit of an under-exaggeration.
He drove home.
Maybe one day I'll have to get a license. My roommate is getting one next year, his financial situation is strong-arming him into the suburbs and into the front seat. He'll uncomfortably readjust his seat position and angles, never quite finding that sweet spot. He'll ignore the oil economy fueling him, and his role in fueling them. He'll check his mirrors. He'll take a sip of his coffee, sigh, and back his car out of the driveway like a retracted promise to himself.
I think I can beat him. Six or seven more years. They're just numbers.
Or maybe I will have to get a license as well, and take the plunge. Learn to walk those hot coals. And when I am issued my license, complete with haggerd photo, I will hide it in shame. Maybe under some towels in the hallway closet, on the top shelf underneath the hanging lightbulb. And when I forget your birthday, our anniversary, my best friend's wedding, a graduation party in a nearby city, I will open the closet door and wrap my license up in my wallet, and hope it's enough of a gift. I will hope you can unwrap those retracted promises, beaming false rainbows, failed covenants.
people always say "it's really easy, there's a simple formula. you just turn it clockwise half way and then turn it the other way until it won't turn anymore and then look in your mirror twice and turn the wheel a quarter turn and and and"
"
My roommate has made it to almost 30 without learning to drive. Or perhaps he has learned and forgotten. Maybe he has a secret license he has been hiding from us.
I think I can beat him. But I'm only 22 now, 23 tomorrow, actually, so that's only 6 or 7 more years without being behind the wheel that I have to get by. That's somewhere between a quarter and a third of the life I have lived so far. It will somewhere between a fifth and a quarter of the life I will have lived at that point.
There was one time my father decided it was time for me to learn. I was already older than the average American teenager engineering his escape pod, courtesy of having attended a boarding school. In fact, my dad decided it was time because I had just graduated from high school.
My family was helping me move from New Jersey to Ohio for college, but we had to make a stop in Tennessee to pick up the old Toyota (or was it a Honda?) that they had bought for my grandparents to use almost a decade before. My mother was the type of person to stock up the top shelf of one our closets with various gifts, just in case. So when that kid in my class that I didn't really know or like invited me to his birthday party out of nowhere, my mom was ready with some wrapping paper. Or maybe we got invited to some kind of housewarming party. The shelf got a little emptier before the light turned off and we closed the door.
So it was really no surprise that she had masterminded a scheme in which my parents bought my grandparents a car to drive around in, with the hopes that I would drive it 10 years later when I was old enough, and my grandparents were too old (and in all actuality, it was only my grandfather anyway, since my grandmother, stricken with glaucoma and osteoporosis, preferred to putter around the house, stocking up Apple Jacks and Mello Yello for my impending summer visits). With me having graduated, the plan was simple: drive down with my family to Tennessee from New Jersey, pick up the Tonda (or was it Hoyota?) and drive up to Ohio from there with two cars, one which they could leave with me.
Maybe they hadn't counted on me not having a license yet. Nothing that couldn't be fixed though. Driving's easy. Tennessee is pretty sparse. My father drove me to an abandoned strip mall.
I have never been comfortable around particularly noisy mechanical things. Vacuuming was a chore. And airplane toilets were absolutely terrifying; I would be halfway out of the folding doors before I flushed the toilet. It wasn't even as if I feared being sucked through it or something, and in fact, that might have made the idea a bit more appealing. Blenders? Also terrifying, but my love for smoothies generally wins out.
The car was not particularly noisy, but feeling the herds of horsepower on the other side of my foot had the same unsettling effect. After all, it is not a far cry from stepping on hot coals, and maybe I even felt a bit like that one scene in Dr. Strangelove, riding that hot and bothered machine into certain doom.
I didn't take the car beyond 20 miles an hour.
And in retrospect, that's almost rather hilarious, as I am rather comfortable, these days, riding my bicycle around at that speed and beyond.
Perhaps my father was a little disappointed in my slow, misshapen laps around the parking lot, and thought that perhaps it was time to work on parking. I know: that pun wasn't intended. He pulled me out of the car and ran over a few basics of parking. I closed the door and my dad stood in front of the car, pretending to be a cone pretending to be another car. I began to ease the car into the parking space and crept forward until my dad jumped out of the way, pushing on the hood.
In retrospect, "crept" might have a bit of an under-exaggeration.
He drove home.
Maybe one day I'll have to get a license. My roommate is getting one next year, his financial situation is strong-arming him into the suburbs and into the front seat. He'll uncomfortably readjust his seat position and angles, never quite finding that sweet spot. He'll ignore the oil economy fueling him, and his role in fueling them. He'll check his mirrors. He'll take a sip of his coffee, sigh, and back his car out of the driveway like a retracted promise to himself.
I think I can beat him. Six or seven more years. They're just numbers.
Or maybe I will have to get a license as well, and take the plunge. Learn to walk those hot coals. And when I am issued my license, complete with haggerd photo, I will hide it in shame. Maybe under some towels in the hallway closet, on the top shelf underneath the hanging lightbulb. And when I forget your birthday, our anniversary, my best friend's wedding, a graduation party in a nearby city, I will open the closet door and wrap my license up in my wallet, and hope it's enough of a gift. I will hope you can unwrap those retracted promises, beaming false rainbows, failed covenants.
