I don't know many guys who admit they aren't good at driving. Ever since Henry Ford, the steering wheel's been kind of a thing young men aspire to and claim they own before even their acne clears. But after a common adolescence where I exercised the chest-beating philosophy that I was somehow great at everything, I find myself now one of very few men who possesses an honest assessment of my driving skills: I don't have any. I used to brag about how I could back into parking spaces really well. But the last time I tried parallel parking it took me five tries until the car in front of me left.
Aside from my incapacity for dimension and negotiating angles, I think the problem is that, other than when I play Mario Kart, I don't trust myself at high speeds. I have a reaction time that is the jealousy of plant life. I'm the guy in his twenties with racing shades driving five under the limit like your grandmother. Always. It doesn't really matter if I'm late, much to the quiet frustration of anyone I happen to be driving. Like my mom. Or pastors. And septuagenarians. Infants. And my friend's 8-year-old cousin. At some point in my life, these people have shown in unsubtle ways how I need to lay it onto the gas pedal.
Nervous we weren't ever going to get there, one guy told me how driving the speed limit itself was not riding the fine line of sin, which he knew he had warned about in last week's sermon.
Anyway, I had a point.
Oh, yes. So my girlfriend, Min, came to visit me in San Francisco and we rented a car for a day. I don't know if Min just thought I was being humble when I told her I really can't drive. I just think there comes a time in your life when you have to recognize your limitations: Like, for instance, after calculating your credits meticulously so that you have enough to graduate and somehow it still takes you seven years to finish college, you have to admit that maybe you're not that good at math. (Or maybe just at school.) (I'm not saying this happened to me.) (That was just an example.) But, anyway, Min probably thinks I'm being ultra-modest because she and I first met when I was fifteen. I thought she was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen and when I got my driver's license later on, I had driven her to a train station once. This was a tactical maneuver devoid of any chivalry and ram-packed full of a barnyard attempt to impress. Also, that was when my email had something to do with how I was one of the wonders of the modern world -- wait, it still is -- and I probably regaled with her with how awesome I was at everything; in particular, driving. So here we are, over a decade later, rekindling a crush that had evinced itself only in the form of letter-writing in our self-conscious teens, and I'm telling her the exact opposite: I actually am bad at everything.
So, from wonder to blunder, while driving back to San Francisco on the highway, I noticed a police car trailing behind me with its red siren lights blinking. I wasn't sure if the lights meant, "Hello, I'm going to pass you but I just wanted to show you in the brightest way I know how", so I kind of pushed my foot on the gas a little to give him space... or something. (I've noticed my reasoning for anything always makes less sense in retrospect.) He got the point pretty quick (that I'm stupid and I don't know that blinking lights on a cop car is a universal signal to pull over) and he started blaring his sirens and shouting on a megaphone. "Pull over!" Which was immediately followed by, "No... NOT at the exit shoulder... Do not block the highway exit. Pull over after the... No. Keep driving... You need to keep driving. Okay... Good... After this underpass, okay... PULL OVER NOW." I'm not kidding.
My girlfriend, who has never been pulled over in her life, calmly pulls out the insurance papers and has my driver's license ready. Probably because, during this time, I'm still trying to figure out how to turn off the radio and also because I just had to have a policeman direct me, step-by-step and via megaphone, the basics of pulling over. The cop walks up and asks me if I know why I've been pulled over. I tell him I don't know and he asks me if I've had anything to drink. I tell him I had a glass of wine with an early dinner three hours ago (which was the truth). I'm sure he's heard that one before so he performs an elaborate alcohol test which consists of him telling me to follow the tip of his finger as he moves it front of my face. He tells me not to move my head but only my eyes. I think he was actually trying to see if I was really stupid. So he could write me a ticket that said, "Driving under the heavy influence of... stupid." Anyway, I passed that test pretty well, I thought. Even when he was being all tricky. And moving his finger way, way over to the left.
He pulled me over because I was weaving a little, he says, albeit it was inside my lane. Other than that, I can go, he says. Essentially, I was having trouble driving straight. None of us moved after he said that, so I was like, "Should my girlfriend just drive because I suck?"
The man, realizing that this ordeal had done nothing for my masculinity, chuckled and said, "No no, you're fine. I mean, unless you're tired or something."
I wasn't tired but I started unbuckling my seat belt anyway because this was seriously the first time I had been pulled over on the account of doing a plain bad job. It was at this point that I realized I don't think they teach you how to drive straight at driving school. I think they taught me... how to turn or something. Driving straight isn't supposed to be the hard part. So maybe the system's not skewed by masculinity and maybe it's not a big deal I'm one of the only few guys who say they suck at driving. Statistically speaking, I just might be one of the few who actually do.
|
