Follow the sings... (Adri at the wheel 2, 3...)
Wendy… my driving instructor kindly yelled at me during our second class “You have to follow the signs or we’re screwed,” and that advice from Wendy, along with the Paulo Coelho books I’ve read over the years, and all the garbage you see on TV… are what have me worried… :P
First attempt at learning to drive… I crashed… nothing too serious… thank goodness… damage to my nervous and monetary system but nothing irreparable… of course, an experience I don’t want to repeat in my life…
Second attempt at learning to drive… traumatic classes… second lesson and I was driving through roundabouts (with a trailer beside me), the middle of San Jose, Second Avenue… and they gave me the lesson of how to start on a hill at a stoplight with a car behind me… I almost died.
Third lesson, Adri crashes into a small tree while learning to reverse… nothing serious… the tree wasn’t very big and the impact wasn’t very strong… but believe me, at this point, my faith was starting to crumble… but I still thought, 11 hours of bitter drinks and it’s over… in a week and a half, I’ll be driving!
On the weekend, Adri injures her meniscus (another trauma that I’ll probably talk about later)… preventing me from progressing in my driving lessons… so it took all my courage to start again… I have to stop… at this point, my friends will understand that my traffic education is starting to smell fishy… but…
The girl is persistent… the following Saturday, I plan to go to the beach… my knee is getting better… my first instructor (who has more faith than Mother Teresa) tells me a few days before, “you already drove through the middle of San Jose, you can take the car to the beach and give it to me on the way back.” I say, of course, I can do that, no problem… but oh oh, my temporary permit expires on Saturday… he says, “don’t worry… we’ll renew it.” I get up at 5:30 because we had to be the first in line because we had to go back to work… (the COSEVI opens at 8 am) after waiting like a fool for 2 hours, they tell me that in this country, you can’t renew a permit before it expires… even if there are still 2 days left… aka, you can’t be responsible… my hope of practicing is ruined…
Tell me, my friends… am I going crazy or do the signs definitely say that the wonderful world of automobiles is not for me?