The Man
So I'm absolutely 100 % terrified by the act of driving. Force me behind a wheel of a car and my legs get all stiff, I white knuckle the wheel and if I approach a speed in excess of 10 mph there is a pretty good chance that I'll want to leave a load in my drawers. A professed agnostic, I suddenly become a praying man when behind the wheel of the car. My usual prayer is, "Please lord don't make me do this." People can make fun of me all they want, I don't care. I don't want to drive it scares me too much.
There is a reason most people learn to drive as a teenager. At that age you think you are immortal. The concept of something bad actually happening to you can not squeeze through the teenage brain filter. Teenagers can leap out of the way of bullets. The gods created the word just for them to play with. Their parents are know nothing idiots. That is the teenage world.
When I was a teenager, and immortal, my parents told me that the insurance plan they had required that anyone with a drivers license in the house be insured to drive the vehicles. As we didn't have a free car for me to be driving anyway I decided to skip drivers education. While I was a true teenager who didn't have much respect for his parents, I understood that they were spending a ton of money on our collective educations. (Both my brothers and myself and I believe mom was working on her bachelors at the time). So there would be no car for me and no money to insure me. So I didn't learn to drive in high school.
As I got older I found excuses not to learn how to drive. Cars cost too much. I never have to be the sober driver. It's cheaper to take the train to work. I don't need a car in a college town.
So when I was twenty one and working in a terrible go nowhere job, my father kept pressing me to take the Chicago police exam. I really had no interest in becoming a police officer but the old man wouldn't let up. So rather than tell the old man I wasn't interested I agreed to take the test. Then I found out that everybody who took the test needed to have a valid Illinois Drivers license.
At twenty one you are aware of the idea of death. Disease and accidental death due to an over indulgence of alcohol don't seem real but the idea that cars are mostly made of plastic and went much faster than I liked to move was a very really terror for me. I spent a week in a van every night with my mother or father driving around an empty Sams club parking lot. I almost swiped a few poles. I was jerky handling then van. I sweated nervously. I didn't like the experience at all.
So when it came time to take the driving exam I surprised myself by passing. I think I barely passed and only because as I was talking to the woman who tested me I found out that I had worked for her father in the steel warehouse the previous summer.
The date of the police test came and I went to the United Center and sat with thousands of people (it was the last test before they started requiring 60 hours of college credits) Many of the people I worked with at the steel warehouse either took the day off called in sick or worked a different shift so they too could take the test. As pay an benefits go being a Chicago police officer is probably one of the best around or so I hear.
Months passed and I got the results I had a score of 35 / 135. I had bombed the test. Every psyche question they asked I had the wrong answer. The only part I had right was the 30 question vocabulary / English skills test. I just couldn't bring myself to do poorly there. Now of course I made like bomb the test was my plan all along, but the thing is, it was never a conscious intention. I may not have wanted to be the police, but the idea of purposely doing poorly on an exam or just doing poorly on an exam at all has always been abhorrent to me. My ego draws a great deal of it's strength from my perception of my intelligence.
So at heart I didn't want to be a police officer. The problem was, who wants to tell their father they don't want to do the same job he does. Not me. I love and respect the old man and it feels very hurtful every time I tell him I'm not interested in being the police, of being the man. Instead I went through this elaborate charade, fooling not only the old man, but myself as well and in the end I ended up with a drivers license I never use.
Why did this come up. Today is the last day to turn in applications for the next Chicago Police test. Get up early and do it in person. You will not see me there.
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There is a reason most people learn to drive as a teenager. At that age you think you are immortal. The concept of something bad actually happening to you can not squeeze through the teenage brain filter. Teenagers can leap out of the way of bullets. The gods created the word just for them to play with. Their parents are know nothing idiots. That is the teenage world.
When I was a teenager, and immortal, my parents told me that the insurance plan they had required that anyone with a drivers license in the house be insured to drive the vehicles. As we didn't have a free car for me to be driving anyway I decided to skip drivers education. While I was a true teenager who didn't have much respect for his parents, I understood that they were spending a ton of money on our collective educations. (Both my brothers and myself and I believe mom was working on her bachelors at the time). So there would be no car for me and no money to insure me. So I didn't learn to drive in high school.
As I got older I found excuses not to learn how to drive. Cars cost too much. I never have to be the sober driver. It's cheaper to take the train to work. I don't need a car in a college town.
So when I was twenty one and working in a terrible go nowhere job, my father kept pressing me to take the Chicago police exam. I really had no interest in becoming a police officer but the old man wouldn't let up. So rather than tell the old man I wasn't interested I agreed to take the test. Then I found out that everybody who took the test needed to have a valid Illinois Drivers license.
At twenty one you are aware of the idea of death. Disease and accidental death due to an over indulgence of alcohol don't seem real but the idea that cars are mostly made of plastic and went much faster than I liked to move was a very really terror for me. I spent a week in a van every night with my mother or father driving around an empty Sams club parking lot. I almost swiped a few poles. I was jerky handling then van. I sweated nervously. I didn't like the experience at all.
So when it came time to take the driving exam I surprised myself by passing. I think I barely passed and only because as I was talking to the woman who tested me I found out that I had worked for her father in the steel warehouse the previous summer.
The date of the police test came and I went to the United Center and sat with thousands of people (it was the last test before they started requiring 60 hours of college credits) Many of the people I worked with at the steel warehouse either took the day off called in sick or worked a different shift so they too could take the test. As pay an benefits go being a Chicago police officer is probably one of the best around or so I hear.
Months passed and I got the results I had a score of 35 / 135. I had bombed the test. Every psyche question they asked I had the wrong answer. The only part I had right was the 30 question vocabulary / English skills test. I just couldn't bring myself to do poorly there. Now of course I made like bomb the test was my plan all along, but the thing is, it was never a conscious intention. I may not have wanted to be the police, but the idea of purposely doing poorly on an exam or just doing poorly on an exam at all has always been abhorrent to me. My ego draws a great deal of it's strength from my perception of my intelligence.
So at heart I didn't want to be a police officer. The problem was, who wants to tell their father they don't want to do the same job he does. Not me. I love and respect the old man and it feels very hurtful every time I tell him I'm not interested in being the police, of being the man. Instead I went through this elaborate charade, fooling not only the old man, but myself as well and in the end I ended up with a drivers license I never use.
Why did this come up. Today is the last day to turn in applications for the next Chicago Police test. Get up early and do it in person. You will not see me there.
More Laters
posted by Rich Rosenthal II at 2:00 AM
5 Comments:
I have a bit of a driving phobia myself. It's completely new to me, since I used to love it, but I haven't been behind the wheel in months. I have anxiety issues these days, and I actually am afraid of what will happen if I have something as powerful a machine as that under my control. So I don't drive. I have to start again soon, since I have kids, and they've got places they need to be, but I'm trying to take it slow. I hope you learn to deal with it. It can be a very liberating thing to be behind the wheel of a car, and feel so free.
I was afraid of driving, and didn't take the driving test until I was 20. It gets better the more you do it, once you realize that the car is really under your control and you are strong enough to handle it. The two things that scared me most were turning, cuz I thought that the wheel could get torn out of my hands, and the other side of the road. Well, the wheel didn't get torn out of my hands, and my brother gave me the best piece of driving advice I ever got about the other side of the road. He said that I shouldn't worry about the right side of the car if I focus on the line on the left. Keep that left margin in your mind and the right side takes care of itself. Worked pretty well too.
Good luck.
remember riding with Mandy?
btw, Chellee just gave some excellent advice if you happen to drive again. it also helps to look at the lines on the right when avoiding staring into oncoming headlights.
Shy -- The Crazy Redhead tried to kill us. and we kept getting back in the car with her. I used to close my eyes. She thought it was funny to get me nuts and terrfied.
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