Me and Driving We've Got Issues

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3 Comments
I should, no, MUST pluck the courage to drive car manually.

Today I saw a 17-year old boy (and don't be asking me how I knew that he was 17) drive a huge manually-handled 4WD. I was perfectly content with not knowing how to handle a manual car hitherto. Well, to say 'not knowing' is not entirely true, since I've got my driving license. But when this particular humiliating sighting took place, I could not help but to bombard myself with questions like:

1. Are you, like, physically deformed to not be able to drive one freaking manual car?
2. How on earth are you going to function in society later on with that deformity?
3. And that boy, by legal regulation, can't possibly have got a driving license. Yet he was so natural at it. And look at you. Aren't you ashamed?

Yes, I am beyond ashamed, but in my defense, I have been wickedly traumatized. This trauma I have been in dated back to absolutely several years ago when I tailed my dad to a deserted place where he taught my big sister how to drive. It was a Vanette Van, so I sat obediently at the back, my white-faced sister on the driver seat and my depressed dad took the front passenger seat. Like I said, my depressed dad was, well, depressed because my nervous sister could not get what he was talking about, so I craned my neck, positioned myself in between the two of them and had a close look at the 'things' my dad was crossly pointing at.

"Clutch. Break. Accelerator", my dad kept saying.
"You just push the accelerator to get the car moving", he added.

Yet my extremely jittery sister was none the wiser despite these being explained to her. So I again craned my neck just to have a closer look at the the three stupid metals placed below.

So that one has got to be the clutch. And my dad said the one right in the middle is the break. So the one on the right has got to be the accelerator. You just push the accelerator to get the car moving. You just push the accelerator to get the car moving.

"That's easy", I heard myself saying.

My dad looked around to me, and for the first time that night he looked hopeful. My big sister gave me an annoyed, withering glance, but I pretended to not notice. Clearly trying to pull himself together from the enormous stress upon him, my dad asked my sister and I to switch places. Moments later, I was seated on the driver seat, and my sister sat grumpily at the back. She even had the time to throw at me one of her show-me-if-you're-any-better looks.

So I was determined to prove just that.

I buckled up. Pushed the gear to 1. You just push the accelerator to get the car moving. You just push the accelerator to get the car moving. You just push the accelerator to get the car moving.

And I pushed the accelerator as hard as my leg could go.

The things that I remember before I was dragged out of the driver seat were the damn loud roar the car let out once I pushed the accelerator to the maximum, the car jumping and racing so fast towards one solid building ahead I could have sworn that was the last day on earth for me, my dad yelling on top of his lungs for me to stop pushing absolutely everything, I opened the door and was about to jump out when the damn car was still moving and when the car stopped moving, I knew I was alive for one more day.

Seconds later, my dad was on the driver seat, my even-more-terrified-than-ever sister on the front passenger seat and I was at the back. We were on our way home.

That was the first and the last time my dad taught me how to drive. When I turned 18 and requested to learn driving, he called up our family driving tutor, and absolutely threw me off to the old Chinese man, saying how much confidence he had in that tutor to teach me driving when I was old enough to know that my dad was actually sparing his own soul. It was hell to learn driving, but I gave my tutor enough headache and heart attack to think that hell was a lot safer bet than teaching me driving. He kept swearing under his breath that I was the most dead-from-the-neck-up driving learner he had had the misfortune to teach.

Yet I passed all my tests at the first attempt.

Now, it's been four years since I first attained my driving license and I've got to apply for renewal before January 1. And maybe, the time has come for me to overcome the childish fear and renew the courage I used to have in handling manual car.

Even though the courage was downright stupid and could have been pernicious ;)


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3 comments:

ZiLL said...

best aziz bawak keta manual..aku dulu pun ada kes jugak..bawak keta manual..smpai trauma..tapi skg da dpt hadapi..dan sbnrnya..xda apa pun..hanya psikologi kita..btw, best of luck..hehe

Aziz said...

Hahaha. Thanks!
Takut la. Baik drive auto je ;)

Ibrahim Ismail said...

Perhaps we were so young (and vibrant) back then, and we take things as easy as being said by adults. We just didn't have the right capability, yet.