Baby, you can drive my car ...

The last day I was in the classroom this year, while invigilating an exam, I came up with a list of ten things I wanted to accomplish with my summer vacation. At the top of the list, and the one thing I will somehow manage, come hell or high water, is to get my driver's licence.

When it comes to being a member of the motoring public, I am a bit of a late-bloomer. But, since we are now fortunate enough to own two fully-functioning, will-pass-inspection vehicles (and four that don't deserve those hyphenated adjectives, so we won't go there), I figured it was time.

I have had my learner's permit for (get this!) ten years. You can't rush these things, you know. So when I found out that a driver's ed class was being offered at my place of work, I decided to fork out the money and settle in.

Going into the classroom portion of driver's ed, I had two expectations:
1) That I would be the oldest one in my class.
2) That I would be surrounded by my own students.

Yes, indeed, I was the oldest one in the class. The instructor, who was very nice, was older than me, but only by less than a month. (She said that I look much younger than my age, so I automatically liked her from that moment on.) I also hold the record for the longest permit-holder she's ever taught.

As for the students, well, only about five of them had I ever seen before in the classroom, so that wasn't so bad. I think my favourite moment was when one of them turned around to pass something back to me, realized who I was, and his mouth gaped open in shock. That was fun.

The four days of classroom instruction did drag, but only after I'd watched all of my teacher-friends gleefully skip away at noon on Wednesday, leaving me and my peanut-butter-and-jam sandwich sitting forlornly on the couch in the staffroom. As they all went off for a last-hurrah at Vito's, I felt like somehow I was stuck in summer school. It was a very weird feeling.

So, now that the classroom part is done, all that is left is the in-car instruction. This scares me. I am a bit of a nervous Nelly because I haven't been able to practice frequently enough. Two weeks go by (because the brother-in-law has borrowed my car) and suddenly I'm right back at the beginning. Nauseous, white knuckles, the whole bit. It's awful. I should be driving every single day, even if it's just around the block. I need the very basics to become automatic before I can become confident at the less-basic stuff. It's very frustrating. But I will get there.

As for the rest of the "Must Do" list ... It will be revealed in good time. :)