Having recently turned sixteen, Miss Marvellous
went about sitting the test for her Learner’s Permit, which she successfully
obtained, of course. Unfortunately,
acquiring it so close to Christmas, both the Captain and I were exceedingly busy
and unable to take her out on her first lesson so it was decided that we would
wait until our arrival at our holiday destination in Bright; located in the
Alpine region of Victoria. As it turns
out, this was a great decision as the surrounding towns have quiet backstreets,
rural roads, rural highways and lots of quiet neighbourhoods for her to learn.
Take into account that Miss Marvellous has only
sat in the driver’s seat of a car with an instructor and two other students for
mere minutes, at a school arranged ‘Driving Education’ excursion. There was silence in the backseat as the
girls gripped their armrests in fear when Miss Marvellous accelerated and braked
abruptly. The Instructor stated with a
grim smile "the speed that thrills is the speed that kills". She returned home from this experience to relay
that she was sure the other students and the instructor had mild whiplash due
to the seconds spent in the car with her at the wheel. This encounter had amounted to nigh on nil
experience.
The Captain announced decisively one morning
that it was time for Miss Marvellous to commence her learning. Instead of driving Miss Marvellous to a quiet
street to get acquainted with the car; with steering, braking, accelerating, the
location of the instruments etc, The Captain, in his infinite wisdom, chose to
tell her the basics (check your seat position, the angle of the mirrors, remove
the handbrake, indicate and check for cars etc) and directed her to drive out
of the caravan car park straight out onto a rural main road with a speed limit
of 100km/hr. The poor girl over-steered
the car into some bushes, accelerated too slowly for such a big road with a
high speed limit and as she braked to negotiate the roundabout at the end of
the road, didn’t quite brake fast enough which had The Captain exclaiming
“brake!” as he grasped the Jesus bar above his door. He directed her to return
back to the caravan park again. When
they walked in, Miss Marvellous announced that she had tried to kill them both
and The Captain, with his hand on his erratically beating heart mumbled that he
had quite a fright as she didn’t brake early enough. Well, derr, that would be the ‘no experience’
part coming into play. Upon hearing
where he had directed her, I almost spat my coffee across the table. I was horrified that this had been her first
experience and said as much. The Captain
executed an eye roll worthy of an exasperated teenager and condescendingly
asked “Well, where would you have taken her then?” I commented
that I would probably have taken her to the quiet backstreets of the town
nearby and let her get used to steering, accelerating and braking first before
I threw her to the wolves! The Captain
reluctantly agreed that in hindsight, this would have been a better
introduction to driving. You think?
The following day he did just that; taking her
to a quiet country road to allow her to become accustomed to accelerating and
braking and knowing when to start braking etc.
I announced that I would take the next lesson. I asked Miss Marvellous where her father had
taken her and took her to the same place.
She drove up and down the road, stopping and indicating and turning
around. She was driving really well so I
swapped seats and drove to a nearby new estate with a court and driveways but
no houses were built just yet. Here I
taught her to negotiate turning around in a driveway, how to hug the curb when
turning tightly in a court and then I took her back to that road for another
trip up and down.
The Captain took her the following day to another
country road but this one had the odd car go up and down and was good
experience with sharing the road and negotiating a single lane bridge. The day after that I took her again and this
time after a trip up and down both of the roads her father had taken her on, I asked her if she would like to drive home
and she did! Having the confidence of
controlling the car she entered streets with traffic and did a sterling job of
not freaking out; I noted she had loosened her ‘death grip’ on the steering wheel
– an excellent indication of her how far her confidence had progressed. The only negative was that my legs were sore
from pushing them hard into the floor on my side as I braked and accelerated for
her and I’m reasonably sure my pelvic floor muscles got a decent workout too. It’s quite frightening being on the other
side and calmly issuing directives with absolutely no control over the
vehicle. .
I was really hoping it would be quite a while
before we encountered the arseholes who are completely intolerant of new
drivers but unfortunately, our first one came on her sixth day out. This time I had mapped out a route for her
with included main roads and small stints on the highways and then the back
roads etc which we completed in a loop.
On one of our trips around, and as Miss Marvellous was waiting on the
main road to turn right into a back street, a cantankerous old bastard pulled
right up her arse and sat on the horn. I
was so angry with him; horrified actually that the stupid old prick would terrorise a young
person learning to drive. I waited for him to slowly drive past, still
sitting on the horn and glaring at us, then I put my head out of the window (almost to the waist I might add) and
screamed on top of my voice “She’s a LEARNER!!!!”. The stupid old fart continued to slowly pass
with his wrinkled old mouth puckered up so I curled a lip Billy Idol style and
gave him the two fisted bump together ‘get
fucked’ gesture from the TV sitcom ‘Friends’. What I really
wanted to do was to get out of the car and bash the fucker to death with
whatever was handy…a stick, a pole…his WIFE!
Stupid old prick. If I had a
voodoo doll handy it would have had about sixty pins sticking out of it’s arse
a few in it’s throat for good measure.
Such is the fury of a protective mother.
Miss Marvellous continued to wait patiently for
a gazillion cars to go by then turned carefully into the street. Trying desperately to get my rage under
control, I started to babble about everything and nothing, attempting to quell
my indignant ire until we were safely at the new estate where I asked Miss Marvellous
to pull over. I then exited the vehicle
and commenced to heavy breathe and execute moves like Peter Garrett in his
‘Midnight Oil’ days to calm myself enough to climb back in the car and continue
calmly with the lesson. I asked Miss Marvellous
if she would like to stop and go home or do another loop and the trooper that
she is, she opted to go again…right back out onto that road.
By the time we made it home I was battling a
rage induced migraine headache, which took 5km of fast pace walking and about
seven text messages to dispel. I
continue to have grand ideas about how Karma would repay the old bastard’s
behaviour in spades.
Doona
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