We never had a car in my family. To this day neither my dad nor my mum hold a driving license. I never really needed it myself to go through my time in high school and university, luckily both were located in central Madrid, a mere 15min tube ride from home. I grew up completely uninterested in driving. My feelings towards cars where of detached ambivalence: I was able to appreciate the line of say a Porsche Carrera but wasn't curious about what it would be like driving that one or any other motor vehicle. As a result I never got my driving license. With time your circumstances and your mindset change. I started to realise that although owning and maintaining a car can be expensive, at time pointless an more often than not a pain in the backside, it also gives you freedom of movement to travel around, visit places and widen your options when deciding where to live or how to commute to work. My sister figured this out quicker than me and became a driver ten years ago.
So, I promised myself that getting my license was the first thing I was going to do once I moved back to Madrid. True to my word I joined a driving school by the end of May, went to theory classes for a month and passed the written test at the traffic agency a couple of weeks ago. After that I had to wait for about a week for the school to find me a gap in their driving instruction schedule, but finally, at last, I was going to sit behind a steering wheel (with the intention to use it) for the first time in my life. I was excited, really up for it. They had booked me for a 45min mid-morning driving instruction session, daily, starting on Friday 27 July.
That day I turned up early at the pick up place and waited in the blazing heat for the liveried school car with the number plate I had been given. After a while, on time, a spankingly new antracite-grey Renault Clio matching the description passed by and pulled over a few meters down the road. The driver, a young woman got out, so did the passenger, a wizened old man, probably already over sixty, with a buzz cut and and boxer's nose. The woman left and I crossed the street and introduced myself to my new instructor. He squinted at me, with an annoyed expression in his face: "Did they book you with me? For now? Pfff, sure, why not, maybe I'll be able to rest once I'm dead." I thought "either the idiots at the driving school didn't tell him or this guy is a bit peculiar." He beckoned me into the car. We got in, I fastened my seatbelt and adjusted the seat and the mirrors while he noted down my details. Still writing and without taking his eyes from his notebook he went: "Don't believe you are very clever and can do this, you can't, you are nothing, you are zero, less than zero, zero to the left - but you might eventually learn how, if you abandon that pride." WTF?? Baffled, I nevertheless nodded in agreement, then he continued: "Driving a car is not easy. Easy is to use a pen, but then you can't kill someone with a pen." Obviously he hadn't seen Casino. But it was a fair point so again I agreed visibly. Also informed him this was the very first time I was going to handle a motor vehicle: "This is your first time ever? Really? But do you know the controls of a car, at least?" I said I knew the theory, what they were for and so on. "Good, then start it, put first gear and off we go." That was all in the way of preparation/explanation/anything, I must have looked as if I wanted a baptism of fire. As I stalled the car twice trying to join the traffic he chuckled: "You were not lying when you said you had never done this before, my God!" Luckily he decided he'd better give me a clue about how to get out of there: "Ease off the clutch slowly! And don't accelerate that much!" Finally we managed to be off and running. As we slowly approached General Perón my feeling was of absolute lack of control over the car, the accelerator too sensitive, not to mention the brake, and the clutch a device designed by a madman who obviously wanted to make learning to drive a car as easy as chewing your own elbow. We turned right onto Dulcinea, at which point I realised I had no idea how to switch on the indicators, thought for an instant about looking for the switch on the dashboard but gave up immediately for fear the distraction made me drive the car into the back of the van in front. In the meantime, my instructor kindly passed on his first impressions about my potential: "Forget about taking the exam before September, no way". As the car stuttered forward at the green light and into the scarily busy Raimundo Fernandez Villaverde I got the first earful from the less than sympathetic drivers behind me. We followed towards Reina Victoria and the less busy streets near Ciudad Universitaria. I relaxed a bit and tried to concentrate more on using the pedals correctly. Not that my instructor would let me: "What do we do when, like now, we are approaching a pedestrian walking on the road? In this case, being blonde and with legs like those we look at her - I know at my age I shouldn't but what the hell...", then he continued in a more philosophical vein: "It is very difficult to find a good woman, so if you happen to run into one, don't let her go." Which is great advice but I'd have rather have him giving me some constructive tips about car handling. After that I kind of mentally shut him away but some of his gems about nothing in particular still reached me, things like "People don't kill other people because they are communists. They do it because they try to impose their beliefs on others" or "Boy, do I not like homosexual behaviour" (don't ask me). This lasted for twenty minutes or so, during which I gingerly negotiated my way through several traffic lights, roundabouts and intersections without much help coming from the passenger seat apart from the one you could find in a motivational essay written by Travis Bickle. Actually I'm being a bit harsh, he probably saved us from having several accidents by correcting my leaden-footed action on the pedals without me noticing. Eventually we managed to get back to the school, and once home and dry he offered his verdict: "You might let yourself be guided but you are not that malleable, it would be different if you were younger, sadly at your age the clay has started to set."
Which I guess I should take he means I am not completely hopeless but will have to work looong and hard - and endure many, many more sessions with this my new pontificating companion
