Keep Hoping Machine Running (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thefourthvine) wrote2009-05-19 11:52 am
thefourthvine) wrote2009-05-19 11:52 am
Entry tags:
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.
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.
no subject
(survey says no)
This is from 2004.
Ok, my judgement this morning was just not too great.
Got up at 4:45. Figured that would give me an extra hour and a half to get to work.
WRONG!!!!
So I get showered, get dressed. Go outside to let the car start warming up (tossed on my Birks, for the moment being). Patio, sidewalk, driveway, street - all solid ice, at least an inch thick. You would have thought I would have gotten a clue then. But nooooooo, I decide I can do this.
So I pitty pat my way out to the car, slipping and sliding the whole way, and about busting my ass on the front steps (3 of 'em). Get the car started. Go back inside. Finish morning routine. Put tennis shoes on, pocket a metal spatula to use as an ice scraper (my real one apparently got misplaced when the Saturn got wrecked, figured this would do). Head back out to car.
Now I find this really amusing - I actually get better traction with Birks than sneakers. I had to *slide* down my front steps. Like on my butt (bumpity, bumpity, bumpity, thank goddess I have padding!). And then still about busted my ass trying to get to the car. Get to the car, and hold on to it perilously while scraping ice off windows and mirrors (yes, the spatula worked).
Get in car. In attempting to use wipers to remove melting ice chunks, tear the blade off the right wiper. Guess I didn't do as good a clearing job as I thought I did. Exit car, fish wiper blade off window to reattach later. Re-enter car.
Cruise in first gear out driveway and down street, onto the cross street.
Okay, now insert, for those of you who have not been to my house. I live in the middle of nowhere in a pine forest. I mean literally in the middle of nowhere, like the streets don't have names other than highway numbers (okay, my street has a name, but we're a tiny pocket of suburbia subdivision in an otherwise desolate hick-type area). Guess how high a priority we are for snowplows, salters, and sanders? Yeah, a big fat, "you're funny, right?"
Now, the end of my neighborhood, where it dumps out onto 24/27 is about a 5-10 degree downslope. And here is where we start to have fun. I'm still in first gear, just about at the point where I'm starting to think to myself, "hey, self - this is a *really* bad idea," when, sure enough, I start to slide out of control down the hill.
More information about my neighborhood: At the point at which it dumps onto the highway, there is a ditch on either side of the road, a stop sign/road sign in the right-hand ditch, and it's a T-intersection. With no road, a lot of trees, and a drop off on the other side of the T.
More information about my driving history: About this time last year, in a similar sort of ice storm, I decide I *am* driving to work. Got about 25 miles into my drive (of a 59 mile drive). Was driving a Miata (weighs nothing, rear-wheel drive), and did a 720 degree spin on US1 into an exit sign. Took out the sign, smashed in the passenger side of the Miata.
no subject
So I am now (very slowly - thank goddess I was still in 1st) spinning uncontrollably, in the general direction of the right hand side ditch, the stop sign, and the road sign. I am having bad deja vu visions, becoming latently religious ("oh please god, goddess, whatever, not again"), and swearing I will be kind to all creatures great and small if only THIS DOESN'T HAPPEN TO ME TWICE IN ONE YEAR!!!!
Come to a stop 6 INCHES FROM THE ROAD SIGN/STOP SIGN/DITCH. Take a moment to stop hyperventilating. Establish that I cannot move forward back up into the neighborhood. Call boss, leave message on voicemail saying "hey I tried, but it just ain't happening, here's why." Called Lee, told her I wouldn't be going in and why and told her I would call back when I was once again safely ensconced at home. Attempted to call Joe to have him come collect me (walk uphill in ice for 1/2 a mile back to the house, when I couldn't make it 10 feet without busting my ass?? Not bloody likely). He is still asleep, does not answer phone (oh, to be able to sleep like the dead).
I contemplate my options. Can't make it back up into the neighborhood. Sure as hell am not going to try to drive all the way to work - highways may be better than my neighborhood, but not *that* much better. Establish, however, that I can go in reverse out onto the highway (I ended up facing into the neighborhood).
Think on this for a minute. Don't want to leave the car where it is, because other people stupidly attempting to drive may end up doing the same thing I did, skid out of control, and hit my car. Decide I will back up, attempt to get a "running start" into the neighborhood and pull way over onto the grass past the ditch. So I do so. And discover I don't have anywhere *near* the horsepower to do that (I drive a 2001 Ford Escape - a smallish SUV).
Slide back down towards the stop sign, managing once again *not* to hit it.
Contemplate my options. Can't go forward. Can't leave it here. Can't drive to work. What's a girl to do? The one thing we have established that I *can* do is back out onto the highway.
So that's what I do. Start heading in the direction of work - there is a gas station 8 miles up the road in Cameron, which may or may not be open, but will at least be a place to park the car where it won't get hit. Start chugging along up the road (which at least looks like someone tried to clear and/or salt/sand it) at about 5 miles an hour.
Being the brilliant one that I am, I fairly quickly contemplate to myself that 8 miles at 5 miles an hour is going to take me more than an hour and a half.
Rethink my options while tooling along at 5 miles an hour. The watertower! There is a watertower a mile from the neighborhood that has a giant flat parking area in front of it - I can leave my car there without worrying that someone will hit it, get a hold of Joe, have him come collect me (Jeep with 4-wheel drive), and go get the car later.
So I get there, am able to get about 50 feet off the road. Park car. Call Joe. Takes about 5 tries, but he eventually answers. Explain the situation, apologize profusely for waking him up. He says to give him 1/2 an hour or so to get dressed, get his car scraped off, and get there. I wait. Drink coffee, listen to NPR, smoke.
Joe arrives. He also almost took out the signs at the end of the neighborhood, but made it intact. We cruise slowly back to the neighborhood. They're supposed to be going in at noon today - I strongly encourage him not to, as it's not supposed to get above freezing today, so none of this crap is going to melt. So anyway, here we are back at the driveway - still have this stupid hill to get up. Even with the 4x4, we barely make it, and it took *forever.* Slowly coast back to the house in one piece and get back inside.
I ain't moving again until the stuff in the neighborhood melts. Will collect my car at that point. Stongly doubt that will be today, probably not tomorrow either. I can't believe I was actually stupid enough to even try to go to work this morning.
Moral of the story: If you think it's stupid, it probably is.