I am an adult loser who can’t drive. If I really put in the effort, in a few years’ time I’ll have been on a learner’s licence for 20 years.
This might be a record for the majestic Australian state of New South Wales, the longest time a man or woman has sat on their L plates. But last time I shuffled in to resit the learner’s test, the lady behind the counter said I’m not even close to getting a commemorative plaque – she reckons I’m still decades behind the person currently holding the title. Which should have made me feel slightly better, but to be honest knowing you’re underachieving at the sport of underachieving tends to crush your ego.
It takes a lot of bravery to be a big gom who can’t drive. You’re admitting to not knowing how to do something teenagers can do. Or in the case of kids down the country in Australia, something they can do at the age of 10.
To say you don’t drive is an admission. It’s standing before the world and saying you can’t tell left from right. Or you have the spatial awareness of tourists on Dublin’s narrow footpaths, ie none. Or that your relationship with your father has been marred forever by learning to do hill starts.
There are things Australians do better than the Irish. Death isn’t one of them
I’ve entered the world of weight-loss clips on TikTok. It’s like heroin chic all over again
Moving to another country is hard. You’re not failing if you’re not living up to a filtered social media standard
Her ‘no’ was clear. She did not want to go home with him. Still he went on. And on
Like Dryrobe wearers, we are an easy target. And we’ll take the sneers and jeers, because we need the lift home at the end of the night.
But licensed drivers will never know our pain. The fear of being tossed a set of keys and told to take the work car. The shame when bosses who trust you to run things find out you sometimes get the clutch and the brake mixed up.
My niece takes tremendous joy reminding me that she will probably get her licence before me, now she’s about to turn 16 and according to her estimations I am “a young 47″.
Maybe that will be the final indignity that pushes restart lessons and learning how to parallel park. Because if anything I am motivated primarily by spite. There’s a special shame in having to beg a lift down the shops from a person whose bum you used to wipe. I’m going to have to slow her progress down by putting a half-smoked joint in her schoolbag. Now who’s not allowed out to go do driving lessons!
When not plotting the downfall of children related to me, I spend a lot of time being made fun of by other adults who can drive. I am the butt of my friends’ and family’s jokes. I could win a Nobel Peace Prize but to my V-8 engine-loving extended family, I will always be the unlicensed freak.
A beloved friend of mine once told me she was grateful to have me in her life, to make her feel better about her own. “At least I got my licence,” she says, having recovered from a serious heroin addiction and restarting life in her 30s. If nothing, I am grateful I can’t drive and that she is still alive so that we can laugh about it together. That feeling is better than ever feeling the wind in my hair as I drive (unsupervised) down the road.
There are talks of changing the licence system so that aspiring Irish drivers would be allowed only four consecutive permits before having to start the process over. As someone who has to resit the theory test every five years, I can safely say it hasn’t catalysed me to get my licence but it has made me really good at passing the theory test.
[ No, the Irish who come to Australia are not the ‘worst’Opens in new window ]
I can’t pinpoint the exact reason why I can’t drive. It could be a mixture of a subconscious fear of mortality and of having a boyfriend with a motorbike when I was a teenager. I have a feeling that my raging, unchecked ADHD was a contributing factor in “not being able to concentrate on the road”, which led to much yelling (my dad) and much crying (me).
I can change gears and steer really well but just not both at the same time, unfortunately for all the flower beds along the curbs. Since going on medication, I feel I’m ready to return to the road. The only problem is deciding on who to supervise me. My partner says he would take me out but he values our relationship too much and I have to agree.
Maybe I’ll hire an instructor, who will talk to me in hushed tones like I’m a skittish horse. Maybe I’ll give up driving manual and acquiesce to an automatic licence.
Or I could wait it out a few more years, then I can get my niece to teach me. Once she stops laughing.
