I’m a 44-year-old woman. I had my first driving lesson at 17, and readers, I’m still learning.
I hate driving. I’ve always hated driving. When I decided not to sit my test, age 17, it was as much an act of rebellion against the assumption I should drive as anything else. I was a contrary wee sod. Still am.
Another reason for not sitting my test back then was my chronic fear of failure.
After years of exams…
Having just spent five years obsessing about exam results at school, the idea of doing anything I might fail was anathema to me. And I thought I would fail my driving test.
Objectively, I was probably right. I’ve never been able to reverse without causing a major hazard, or confidently decide what to do at a junction.
When my eldest niece and nephew were born in the early noughties, I half-joked that they’d be driving before me.
Just over a year ago, my niece passed her test the day after I failed for the third time. I was absolutely raging. Not at her, I was proud of her. Raging at myself, and the test route in Glasgow that had three times defeated me.
My parents kept encouraging me to book a test in Montrose, near where they live, but I couldn’t get a test in Montrose for love nor money.
Mission almost impossible
Pandemic backlogs have turned booking lessons and tests into mission almost impossible.
But even though I like to think Glasgow test routes are harder than the Montrose route, I reminded my parents that the last time I failed on reverse parking and it wouldn’t have made any difference if I’d been in Glasgow or on the Isle of Eigg.
The other day my eldest nephew passed his test, first time round, with flying colours. I wasn’t raging at all this time (it’s been over a year since I failed a test, so it’s not quite so raw).
I’m just proud of him, and sort of pleased that my joke from 2003 about them both passing before me came true.
The satisfaction of a good ‘long game’ joke, paid off 20 years later, does somewhat take the sting out of failing to have a driving license 27 years after my first lesson.
However, my youngest nephew will be old enough to sit his test in five years’ time and if I’m still learning to drive by that point, I might strain to see the funny side.
Fingers crossed it won’t come to that…
For test number four, I’ve changed things up a bit. Well, I didn’t have much choice. My previous instructor, who saw me through three failures, ‘retired’ – that’s what he’s told me anyway.
I half expect to see him still taking people out, people his very good instruction would not be wasted on.
A blacklist?
I couldn’t find another instructor for ages – in dark moments I wondered if I was on some kind of blacklist, like pubwatch: ‘do not let this woman in your car’.
But finally, I did find a new instructor, Graeme. And a new test route, East Kilbride.
And if 30-something Graeme decides to retire from driving instruction before I pass my test, maybe I will too. Until then, here’s to fourth time lucky…
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