Driving Nerves

 If I haven't mentioned it already: I hate driving.

Don't get me wrong. I like being able to drive. I appreciate having the capability to get into my car (I also appreciate that I have a car) and go wherever I'd like.

But the actual driving? I find it stressful. I always have. I learned to drive very late. Unlike most other teens, I was not eager to take the wheel. My family went through rough times during my learning-to-drive years (the early 90s). We owned an old blue Toyota Corona--not Corolla, CoroNA. Bless its mechanical heart. It got us where we needed to go, mostly. But take your foot off the gas at all, and the thing died. Stopping anywhere but your final destination required combining the break with a constant revving of the engine, as if starting a street race. More than once I would forget, or get the combo wrong, or something. I have vivid memories of my father panicking as we shuddered to a halt in the middle of a busy intersection.

I drive with two feet--on an automatic--to this day. I drive with panic and shame as well. I get very nervous changing lanes, turning out onto a busy street, navigating a four-way stop, or--worst of all--turning left without an arrow. Most of the time I flatly refuse to turn left without a protected light. I'll happily make a block of right turns to avoid it.

I was twenty before I took a driver's test thanks to my friend A. I used her car. I passed only because the weary, done-with-all-this old instructor neglected to make me parallel park (a feat I still could not manage today). 

In college, for a few years, I had custody of my family's next vehicle, a 1979 Ford cargo van that we had been gifted by a kind elderly woman. She had many dogs, whom she loved dearly and spoiled with every indulgence she could manage. The van, as we got it, consisted of a driver's and passenger's seat up front, with the cargo space in back covered in archeological layers of rugs, all matted with various canine extrusions. The smell . . . took a long time to leave, lingering well after we had peeled the rugs off the bare floor.

I didn't use the van much. The lack of any windows made merging so much more thrilling, and I cared not for those thrills. On those occasions where I'd venture off campus to a store or somesuch, I'd spend the entire time shopping with my heart racing, dreading the necessity of the trip back. 

For most of grad school, I relied on Minneapolis's public transit system--and my partner, who drove in any weather with perfect confidence. I drove his car only a few times then. This changed as we moved to Florida for a few years. I'd help out with long drives now and then (highway driving outside of cities is usually fine for me). 

All this changed when he got a job in a big metropolitan area, and I got a job in--well, the mid-sized city where I still am. He couldn't have a car, and I needed one. Thus, I got his. I went from near-zero driving to driving all the time overnight. And, like all other awful learning curves, I eventually got to where I can drive without it being a source of dread--mostly.

But there are still days like today, where driving to a new location and navigating parts of the city I don't know well in heavy traffic lead me to abandon my tasks and get home. Home--where I can be glad that I drive while still hating to drive.