Oh and this is my date, Mr. Diet Coke with lime.

Okay, so there is something I haven’t been writing about on this blog, because it’s actually more embarrassing than the fact that I held a moment of silence for the victims of the Titanic disaster at two-thirty in the morning when I was in sixth grade.

I don’t know how to drive.

 

Believe me, I know. It’s beyond pathetic. It’s beyond embarrassing. It’s beyond explanation. It’s just beyond.

What this fact means is, at a party in college when I was a sophomore, some kid (named Stro) found this out and then asked me if I was Amish. Seriously. And I said yes, why in fact I am. (And your cell-phone is eeeeeevil.) The kid, of course, believed me.

Now, in Stro’s defense, if I can’t drive and I’m a sophomore in college (and now a fake adult), I probably should be Amish. So I won’t make excuses, because there are none. I mean, I did go to boarding school, so I usually pull that one on people who did not, and they sort of nod their heads and look away and pretend to not know me. But all of my high school friends somehow managed to get theirs, so that reasoning doesn’t really fly with them, hence the fact that they hate me 87% of  the time. I no can designate drive. (Whenever Emma is annoyed with me, about anything, the fight always boils down to her saying GET YOUR FUCKING LICENSE ALREADY WORTHLESS HO.) Also, my Dad lives in NYC and doesn’t own a car, but that really makes no sense either, because he moved there when I was seventeen, thus removing any viable relation to his geographical location and my lack of ability to operate a motor vehicle. But I’ll throw that one out there anyhow. Convinced I’m not a total idiot? 

No?

Well, let me tell you, that opinion is about to change because I am happy to share some shocking news: I now am the proud owner of a learner’s permit. This is a big deal. A HUGE DEAL. Frankly, my only major flaw for years has been that I was in the position of inadvertently killing anyone around me who was having a medical emergency and would die unless given transportation immediately. And with that out of the way-I’m perfect!

I got my permit in early June. And my overall approach to learning to drive-my driving doctrine, if you want to call it that- was initially this: NOT WITH THAT WOMAN.

That woman being my Mother of course. Uh-uh. Not gonna happen. Nope, I will learn from: a) my friends and b) from lessons.

I have really bad luck though. The first time I drove with a friend-socialist Jeanine-she started laughing and telling me she felt like she was trapped in a game of Mario Cart. I found this deeply offensive and told her to get her fucking micro economic loving ass back in the driver’s seat if she found me so amusing because it’s NOT FUNNY TO TEASE ME FOR BEING SO SCARED of cruising around the nursing home she and her Mom live in.

Onto to the driving lessons I went. (And I swear to God, I’m not making this story up.)
So the lessons cost forty-five bucks an hour. Uge rip off, clearly. The guy who picks me up is middle-aged with a thick Boston accent. His name is Joe. Pretty standard. But thing is, Joe is fifteen minutes late. This means that I’m already sort of pissed before getting behind the wheel, because ahhhh I’m paying like a lot of money for one hour, so I expect all four quarters of quality learning time, ya know? (Am I being unreasonable here?)

I hand him my money, and I ask, very politely, if we can go until 1:15. And he looks at me like I asked him if he would like to have sex instead, or like, go play American Girl Dolls or something. Like, really really confused. So I switch gears, and try to tell him that I’ve never really driven before and would prefer not to go through any busy intersections or partake in any “intense driving situations”; translation take me to a SPED parking lot Joe, and make it snappy. Joe apparently does not hear me. Instead he responds by saying, “Ah, God my stomach is killing me. I must have had some bad coffee this morning.” Then he looks out the window.

Um, ew? How does one respond to that?

But to be honest, this was only the second time in my life that I was ever behind the wheel of a car, and I was so terrified that I didn’t have time to notice that: a) the guy is retarded and has the shits and b) he never answered my question about extending the lesson.

We start driving. He is asking me all these questions like “where did you go to college” and “what was your major” and he’s grimacing and I’m like dude STOP TALKING TO ME I NEED TO FOCUS I’M GOING TO KILL US WHY ARE YOU NOT TEACHING ME ANYTHING.

So we’re cruising around, and I’m starting to calm down. This lasts about three minutes. Because soon enough, I am watching Joe whip out his cell-phone. Insert cartoon bubble: He wouldn’t make a phone-call during a lesson now would he…. 

And he calls the driving school company and right in front of me he’s all like, “Hey babe (yes babe), yeah this girl here asks me if I can go to 1:15 because I was late. I mean, I gotta another appointment at one so like, what….”

Long pause.

“I know. No, I know. I mean, yeah that’s what I was thinking too. So what do I say to her?”

At this point, I’m like THE HER IS UM TEN INCHES AWAY FROM YOU AND DUDE I’M PAYING CAAAASH MONEY FOR THIS LESSON….and um, okay, Joe, were approaching some sort of Minority Report style traffic jam Joe. Cars everywhere. Welp, there goes all the blood from my face. Goodbye life.

Now, I know for you “driving folk”, this is all normal and shit, these “fast cars”, but shut the hell up already because you were once sixteen once just like I am twenty-one now, and when I later told this story to my Mom she said, “Why Caroline, how petrifying! That is just the busiest intersection in the whole town! What was he thinking!” so I know it was bad. (I won’t go into any more details, because I don’t want to scare the children, but essentially something occurred that made him grab the wheel and mutter “Jesus Christ lady” under his breath. Yeah, I almost killed us.)

Approximately thirty seconds later, after we had crossed the ring of fire, my heart is racing and I realize I’m in one of those situations where my gut is saying something is off, and I should just pull a Wade Boggs and jump out of the moving car already. I faintly whisper to my pal, “Please no more intersections.”

Joe’s response?

“Yeah, I don’t know the area that well.” WHAT??? And then:

“Alright, you gotta pull into that Dunkin’ Donuts right there. I gotta use the toilet.”

Yep. He had to use the toilet. On my dime. I watched him RUN INTO THE STORE. About ten minutes later he strolled out. (What, no donuts? Awk-ward.) 

I sat in the driver’s seat, crawling in my skin. Joe got in the car.

“Look,” he said, “I uh, I’m not gonna make you pay for this lesson. Because, uh, I was late and you know…with this and all.”

So, with this and all, I didn’t have to pay for my ahem, crappy lesson, and since then dear old Mom has been teaching me. And she’s actually doing a pretty good job. My Joe almost shitting on me experience was about a month ago, and now I’ve gone onto to bigger and better things, things like: switching lanes, surpassing the fifty mph mark and merging! And night driving!

For instance, today I drove to the grocery store and back. (Yes, that is the plot to the next Jerry Bruckheimer movie.)  And I was really hungry when I did this, because it was 5p.m., so it was extra hard. The moment we got home, I went into the kitchen to make myself a snack. Mom followed me in, and she too started rummaging around.

As I was mixing myself some yogurt and honey and peanut butter, I heard her say, “Oh, can you grab me a soda too?”

I turned around. Me had grabbed no soda. There was a can of Diet Root Beer on the counter next to her. She was giving me a half-crazy smile. I looked at the can, and back at her.

“Mom, I didn’t just take that soda out of the fridge. You did.”

“Oh, I must have forgotten! Ha ha!”
She took the can, and mosey-ed away.

Granted, I was willing to let it slide that the woman couldn’t remember something she had done .67 seconds earlier and was now talking to herself. But ten minutes later, when I was going into the fridge to get a soda, she yelled from afar, “Don’t you DARE think about a grabbing that last soda missy!” (If you knew my mom, you’d know she was being dead serious.)

Was it the last soda in the fridge? Of course not.

I told my Mom that she clearly has a more-than-friends relationship with the Diet Root Beer cans in the house, and that she needed to cool it. Playing hard to get with them earlier, and then practically killing me for possibly taking the last one of her cronies….it’s enough to make a girl flee the nest.

On foot, of course.