thefourthvine | Driving Shame

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Driving Shame

Our neighbor across the street is a very fine man who should just not drive. Ever. Once, as Best Beloved watched in bemused astonishment, he backed his SUV-type-car smack into the little red sports car he loves but almost never drives (because he has kids). He just - he put that car in reverse and hit the accelerator and did not stop until there was a CRUNCH sound. And then the sports car had to go away for a few weeks.

Twice, he's managed to back out of his driveway and somehow hit his lawn instead of the street. Twice. And I don't mean just brushing his lawn with a single wheel; he backed right straight across its lovingly-maintained greenness and dropped into the street off the curb with a resounding, car-shaking thump. And that's just what we've seen, and it's not like we watch him every minute, or even most minutes. (I will admit that I've thought occasionally that a webcam pointed at the front of his house would be bound to yield interesting results.)

It has reached the point where, if we're anywhere on the street and we see him getting into his car, we retreat at least fifty meters and try to put a solid barrier between him and us. And then we watch, because we know it will be good. (On Sunday, we had a 5.0 Richter scale earthquake. When it started, we were bathing the earthling, and as the house shook we looked at each other and said, "Either it's an earthquake or the neighbor just backed into our house.")

Best Beloved finds this pathetic. He's a nice man, he's successful, he has nice kids and a nice partner and a nice life, but when he goes into reverse, he takes his life and his insurance premiums in his hands. I, on the other hand, am entirely sympathetic, and here's why.

When I took driver's ed, I had never been behind the wheel of a car. I couldn't be covered by my parents' insurance until I had a learner's permit, and I couldn't get that until I had driver's ed, and to my parents, that meant that I could not so much as sit in the driver's seat. Which, fine. I doodled through several boring lectures and averted my eyes through many gruesome movies. And then came my big day. I showed up at the "range," which was an old motocross course the driver's ed people had bought and used to break in their students before they inflicted them on the actual public streets. And I expected I would learn how to drive.

Except. What happened was, we were all put in cars and told to just - go. No instructor in the car; he sat in a little tower and shouted at us through a radio. No instruction in, you know, how to drive. And everyone else was fine with that; they climbed into their cars like old pros and went. So I tried to, and I did fine. Until we were ordered to put our cars in reverse. Everyone else backed neatly and efficiently from one orange cone to another. I backed the car straight into a ditch. And I mean into that ditch. I couldn't get it out. The instructor couldn't get it out. Later, they had to bring a giant crane in to get it out. I am totally not kidding.

As I got out of my butt-down, teetering car and walked in shame back to the waiting area, the instructor yelled at me, "Why didn't you TELL me you didn't know how to drive?" And I didn't know what to say. It was my first range session. Of course I didn't know how to drive. I couldn't figure out how all those other people did. Didn't their parents worry about their insurance?

Anyway. Several years later, I was in college, and I was relating this story to a group of friends, as I have done many many times because it's one of those humiliations I cannot stop replaying in my head (especially, oh god, the jump down from the elevated driver's seat, and the long hot walk while everyone stared at me from their non-ditched cars, and the half-hour miserable wait while everyone else drove), and one of the people in the group sat bolt upright. "That was YOU?" he said. "They told us about you! You're FAMOUS!"

He took driver's ed two years after I did. They were still telling the tale of the girl who didn't know how to drive and backed into a ditch and they had to get a crane to get the car out. For all I know, they're telling it even now. It was yet another time in my life when I got to be the Horrible Example.

So I can relate to our neighbor. I haven't backed into a ditch in many years - really, it was just the once - but I still flinch every time I shift into reverse.

And the thing is, as we were talking about it, Best Beloved disclosed her own reverse shame story - one she had not previously told anyone, not even me, even though we've been married more than fifteen YEARS. I will not relate it here on the extremely off chance that the owner of other car reads this. (Also, she would hurt me.) And I shared with her a story I had never told anyone before, about how I hit the mailbox and knocked the whole thing into the street and didn't notice and a neighbor picked it up and put it on our lawn and my parents thought it was the victim of mailbox baseball (a popular pastime where I grew up) and cursed a little bit and then my father put it back up. And I never told them otherwise.

So we shared these stories, and then I started wondering how many other people have driving shame stories to share. (By "driving shame," I don't mean "I never use my turn signals." I mean, like, "I forgot to put the parking brake on and it rolled into the street and sat there for hours, forcing all our neighbors, as they returned from work, to drive into someone else's driveway to get around it.") I'm hoping it's not just Best Beloved and me and the guy across the street who have these stories. I mean, I can think of five of them right off the bat, including one that scares me more now remembering it than it did when I did it.

And the thing is, these are all more terrifying now, because we have the earthling. It's one thing to look back in shame; it's entirely another thing to be looking ahead in horror.

So: do you have any driving shame stories? I want to hear them! Not only will I feel less like an idiot (I backed into the ditch oh my god); I will also have a great resource to show the earthling in about 16 years, when he asks why he can't get a license.

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I have so many Driving Shame stories that I almost do feel shame! Close enough that I feel the need to preface this with: In Oklahoma, everybody speeds. People hauling livestock trailers speed. I am not alone! I just tend to exceed the traditional no-ticket zone (where you do not go more than 10 over the posted speed unless the road is empty or it's a highway).

1) I once backed up into my dad's pickup. While he was twenty feet away, mowing the lawn. Watching him sprint for the car, I was sure that My Doom Was Upon Me. The truck was undamaged, even though the collision was loud, so I lived.

2) Taking the back road to town, you had to turn left at a T-shaped intersection that overlooked a field. I...forgot the paving was uneven and didn't correct my angle like usual and ramped off the road. Into the field. But this was so common the landowners' had given up on fencing it off. No damage!

3) Ahhh, that time I was late for the SAT. So I have to take the test in another town. I get up and on the road in plenty of time...until I take the wrong turnpike, going west instead of east. You can't turn off of the turnpike; there are no roads, only fields. You can't U-turn; there's a barrier. So I drive 40 minutes in the wrong direction, steadily panicking. Finally, I am on the right turnpike. Going 112 mph (speed limit: 75). And then I see the lights of a highway patrol car!

Thankfully, he was the one trapped on the other side of the barrier this time and I pulled it back to 95 for the rest of the trip (I could not miss that test; it was my last chance before application deadlines!).

Aaaand, best (or, y'know, worst) for last:

4) So I was driving my brother to school and we were late, but I was sure we could make it if I just gunned it. So I'm blazing through the outskirts of town at 90 in a 45, slowing to 60 in a 35 when I hit actual town, and hitting the school zone at 45 in a 25 when I hear something behind me. It was a cop on his loudspeaker. He had been behind me the whole way running lights but no siren.

Cherry on that sundae? The class we were late for? Marching band. When I (finally) pulled over, there were 60 classmates on the practice field beside me, watching. I spent the day mocked by everyone up to and including teachers.

Forgot one: I once ran out of gas in a Taco Bell drive-through.

Oh dear god. I have, perhaps, too many of these to share, which is funny becasue I am an excellent driver.

I was not, however, a great driver when I was 16, especially the time that I backed into a basketball hoop that was cemented into the ground at the edge of a cul de sac and knocked the thing clean out of the ground. To be fair though, I was driving a 1981 volvo at the time and those mofos are tanks.

There was also the time that I (age: 17, condition: tipsy) drove my 92 Ford Explorer home the 5 blocks from a friends house, tried to parallel park it and managed to lodge the front street side fender of my dad's car under my wheel well when I crashed into it.

I failed my first drivers' test, mainly because the night before I slept-walked and washed my contacts down the sink in my sleep. (At the time, I had no backup glasses, either.) My vision was borderline good enough that my mom made me go take the test -- and I would have done fine, except I was a bit rattled and made that left-hand turn from the right-hand lane. Oops.

So the guy who gave the drivers' tests in my hometown was this infamous old bastard with an Irish accent who wore a lot of Brylcreme and smelled of Turkish cigarettes. He was notorious for failing people with long hair automatically if they didn't put it up.

He had me parallel park the car, which I did perfectly -- but of course he had to fail me because of the above traffic violation.

I came back a couple of weeks later (with my contacts this time) and this time I drove more or less fine, but I could not. Park. the Car. At All.

"I remember you from before, young lady," he said, "and rather than get in the car with you and do this again, I am going to pass you. But never parallel park your car in the state of New York."

(When quoting this, you have to use a heavy Irish brogue for verisimilitude.)

This, and the neighbors' mailbox that I destroyed because there was OMG A BEE IN THE CAR (the car was *totally fine* in that scenario, but a handmade wooden mailbox decoration bit the dust) -- these incidents are really the nadir of my driving experience, and I'm pleased to say they were both about (Jesus God) 20 years ago.

Somewhere, I had this written up all right and proper, but. Snowbank.

It was my first time driving, and it was winter. Mama and my little sister were out of town for a violin event, and my dad got an evil look in his eye and took me down for my permit test. He stopped once we got off the paved roads and let me drive the rest of the way home. I had a bit of a time getting it started. I finally did, though, and we set off. I downshifted as we went up the little hill, and took my foot off the gas as we went down the hill towards the corner. "Use the brake," my father said, so I put my foot back down on where I was sure the brake was as I prepared for the turn.

The car accelerated and shot straight into the snowbank, then the engine sputtered and died. Shaking, I turned the key to turn the car off. Into that echoing silence, my father said cheerfully, "Well, this time we worked on starting and going. Next time, we'll work on turning and stopping."

The passenger door didn't open until I popped the hood. My father went down the road to our driveway and got the spare shovel out of the truck. Some burly young men with a pickup truck paused and offered us a tow; my father refused on my behalf. He was fairly intent that I should be the one to get us out of the ditch, since I'd put us there.

My mother came back before my father could get the hood issue fixed, and he had to explain. He'd been hoping to get me my permit with as little fanfare as possible, to avoid her worrying, but that was a little less possible now.

I recommend a big, empty parking lot for the Earthling's first time behind the wheel.

Remind me to tell you about the time I changed my own oil and didn't put the filter on tightly enough. I lent the car to a friend when I went out of town and the engine seized on him in the middle of a busy intersection.

I pay other people to change my oil now. It's cheaper.

...not precisely driving (there was the time I spun me AND little brother out on a mountain road with a steep drop-off because I forgot that I was used to driving it with snow tires and had had my tires changed since I'd last gone up - damn that black ice - I think that was the worst real driving one).

Last summer, I nearly backed my car off the side of a hill, and by "nearly" I mean "IT WAS DANGLING OVER THE EDGE".

I was trying to find my dad and stepmom's new place in the middle of nowhere, turned down the wrong driveway, and tried to make a three-point turn... except there wasn't enough road, and the ground to the side of it dropped off sharply. If it wasn't for the parking brake and the (rather vexed) property owner, who was able to push the car while I drove it forward, I suspect my story would have ended rather like yours. The best part, though, is that by that point I'd been driving for a good SEVEN YEARS.

And then there was the time I drove into a concrete pole at the gas station the first time I went to fill up my first car.... or the time I ran out of gas on the freeway because I was protesting high gas prices (two dollars a gallon, omg!!)... or the time I drove over a planter, popped a tire, then drove across the intersection to the tire repair shop... or the time I made a hail-mary U-turn across three lanes of highway traffic with cars incoming... or the countless times I've backed into, driven into, or just plain hit someone else's car...

Maybe there's a reason my friends don't believe I'm a good driver. But I've never gotten a ticket, and surely that counts for something!

I learned to drive on a 60s volvo with a sticky clutch. I am not a naturally coordinated person. It was awful. I stalled out in intersections all around town, and have never had so many fights as with my mom in my whole life. Finally my stepfather took over and it was a great relief to everyone.

The day I finished my last accountancy exam was a long one. I got up really early to do some last minute cramming, and then I did the exam (four hours!) and then I went out to celebrate with friends. Now, I was planning on driving home, so of course I didn't drink, but what I hadn't taken into account was just how very, very, VERY tired I would be by the time I finally left for home in the wee small hours of the morning.

This may possibly explain how I managed to drive on to the motorway going in the wrong direction.

Fortunately, there was no traffic on the road, and I realised my mistake fast enough to make a U-turn and get the hell off the road, but I can still remember very clearly the gut-freezing sensation of terror when I realised what I'd done.

Oh man. I was driving in Calgary, which is basically a bunch of suburbs connected by highways, and the deerfoot trail haunts me still. Anyway, my plan was to stay in the suburbs, because aahaahaa omg no, but in panicked terror, I managed to turn the wrong way up a highway off-ramp, and didn't realize what I had done until I met a car coming off the highway in the other direction. I can't say which of us was more surprised. They very patiently waited for me to do a approximately thirty-point turn, and turn around, and then I fled to the nearest parking lot and put my head between my knees for a bit.

Also, I did all this in my Uncle's whale of a van, after having been driving for a total of several months.

When I was taking driver's ed, I swerved so as not hit a bird on the road while going around a heavily trafficked corner. Amazingly, no one, including birds, died.

So many driving shame stories! But happily, all of them old by now!

So there was that time I locked myself out of a borrowed car. It was an old Ford pickup with push-down door locks in both sides, and I hadn't noticed they were pushed down, and I slammed the door - with my purse, cell phone, everything inside. And then when the AAA guy showed up he only pulled out a tiny metal doo-dad with a hook at the end, stuck it down the door, popped the lock, smiled, and drove away.

Or that time I parked too close to a cement pillar in a parking garage and forgot about it when I came back, thus peeling out in a slightly crooked line and scraping the car door horribly...

Which reminds me of the time my friend and I managed to get my car locked up in a parking garage - whod've thunk some parking garages had OPENING HOURS - and had to call the company and pay an outrageous fee to liberate our car so we could get home. We never told our parents. To this day it is still a secret, so y'know, schhh!

Though the worst driving shame story is probably that time at the unfamiliar gas station where I was really tired but stupidly driving, and my friend (same one) who is taller than me and so can see past the nose of the car, which I can't, started to tell me to stop as we neared the pump. "Stop... Stop! STOOOOOP!" I just kept going and drove directly into this pole marking the end of the 'tanking zone' or whatever. I still can't believe I heard him loud and clear and didn't just trust him and stopped.

So I was sixteen or seventeen and already had my license. For the record, I've never caused an accident and never gotten a ticket, and I think I've always been a good driver. But when I was in high school I got up at 6 AM, threw my clothes on and jumped in the car to leave for school at 6:15. And one morning I was backing out of the garage and hit the side of the garage with my left side mirror.

Except, instead of stopping when I hit it, like a normal person, apparently I didn't notice and I just kept going. And this wasn't one of these fiberglass or plastic cars where they now make the side mirrors to just snap off. No, this was an old Chevy, a hunk of steel. That mirror ripped off and took the whole steel covering of the door with it.

That was an embarrassing way to wake up my parents. And of course I had to drive the thing like that for a while, insides of the door showing, so I had to explain how it happened and hear everyone puzzle over why I kept going instead of just STOPPING when the mirror hit the garage.

And that's why that car was named Vincent, after Van Gogh. Cause it lost its ear in a bout of crazy.

Oh, crap. I have another driving shame story that I have apparently blocked out because I really am ashamed. But my husband does his best to keep me from forgetting.

This was pretty recently, in the last four years. I got up to go to work one morning, got in my car, put it in reverse, and backed up, right onto the hood of my husband's car. *shame*

To defend myself, normally he parked next to me, not behind me, and my back window was frosted over, so I couldn't see. But you'd have thought I'd have noticed the black car that I walked past to get into my car. Luckily, we both have Saturns, which are made of dent-proof plastic. There's just a tiny little line on his hood that shows where I drove up onto it. And it shames me to this day.

Apparently, reverse is hard.

I:

was rear ended by a mack truck thirty minutes before taking my driver's test. I passed.

pulled out of a parking lot at just the right angle to hit a lamppost and knock off my front bumper.

Backed into a tree stump the night I met my first girlfriend. In retrospect, that should have been taken as an omen.

Oh, man. I totally failed my first driver's test through nothing but nerves. And I once couldn't donate bood because I almost got hit in the parking lot on the way in and I couldn't calm down enough to qualify. If I had been ACTUALLY HIT by a Mack truck before taking my driver's test, I probably would still not be a licensed driver today.

(And I once backed into a pillar in the parking structure attached to my place of work, in the space where I'd been parking for two YEARS. Just - WHUMP, and there went my bumper.)

Oh God, I haven't driven in 8 years because shortly after passing my test I 1) backed heavily into a wall and gave my passenger whiplash and 2) crashed into 2 parked cars while trying to drive out of a carpark and then drove off at speed, screaming. I'm just happy I live in a city with a great public transport system!

I so envy you. I could not, in fact, survive without driving, because our public transportation system SUCKS. Every time I visit London, I fall in love with the public transport and try to figure out how we could move there.

Um. I backed the car out of the garage, but wasn't paying attention, and took the driver's side mirror off. I was 24 and had been driving for six years.

Last summer I was at a stop/yield on an entrance ramp, waiting my turn to merge onto a busy road. I didn't double check the car in front of me, thought I was clear to go, and accelerated right into his trunk.

And I think of myself as a good driver.

Edited 2009-05-19 19:15 (UTC)

See, I envy you. After the Ditch Incident, I could never consider myself a good driver; I relive it every time I go into reverse. Seriously. TRAUMA, I am telling you.

I AM the Lunatic Driver Your Mother Warned You About

Re: I AM the Lunatic Driver Your Mother Warned You About

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