Driving Miss Crazy. (Not the best pun ever, wanna fight about it?)

I, as a person, am not very achievement oriented. I tend to focus on one sizable goal a year, close my eyes and hope for the best. I've spent the last year learning too drive and it was an ordeal. At first I resisted it completely sticking with the unlikely, yet often irrefutable logic, that I was going to fucking kill someone. Learned drivers laughed this off, insisting that I just had to get the feel of the car, that it all becomes second nature. They just didn't get it. They were literally putting me in the driver seat of a death machine.

But it wasn't just the spectre of imminent destruction that clouded the path of enjoyment that was learning to drive. Mostly its just hours of social awkwardness. Every near crash made an instructive parent lose more respect for me, and as for the hours spent with driving instructors..

Spending more than an hour in a confined space, with a stranger, who you are paying to judge and criticise you. What kind of sick hell is that? And why have I endured it nearly 20 times? Intensely staring at me while I try not to steer a two ton death machine into a stream of oncoming traffic, while muttering "biting point" under your breath every now and then, does not a happy Niamh make. It stresses me out, to say the least.

My first driving instructor tried to bond over the course of our (purely professional) relationship by incessantly talking about his live in "partner" and her daughter. He was never inappropriate, by normal social standards. But as I think has been well established, one person's acceptable social behaviour and small talk, is my over share. I just did not want to know about this man's personal family life, especially as I was particularly concerned that at any moment I might kill him, robbing his pseudo step-daughter of a driving instructor.

My second driving instructor was a lot more reserved, and kept conversation strictly to observation, clutch control and coasting. This suited me down to the ground. However, instructor number two seemed to attract awkward incidents. During his driving lessons I was pulled over by the Gards on multiple occasions, even, on one memorable trip, breathalised. I will never get over this. I had to blow into one of those breathaliser machines on a mock driving test. My instructors reaction? "If you fail this breathaliser I am fucked." Eh, CHEERS. You're not the only one. During another lesson, at this stage we were driving around in my own car as I was a lot more comfortable with the clutch and the like, I drove him back to the industrial estate he had parked in. And remained parked in. As his car was locked in. He was the male, adult, driving instructor version of me, in terms of his awkwardness and plain bad luck.

The test itself is the most sadistic, state enforced requirement ever conceived. I am convinced that Driving Examiners are born, not made. It takes a certain smug, condescending, cruel asshole to conduct driving tests. They are suitable to no other position on earth. Once you fail your test (as I did, to the shock of absolutely no one, except my mother, who maintains an unexplainable faith in me) you are left in suspense as they bring you all the way back to the RSA offices, to inform you of your failure and hand you a "Statement of Failure". In case you you were in any doubt. The correct response to this is "Oh, fantastic. If you excuse me I'm just going to DRIVE MYSELF HOME. Bye now." My response was "Yeah. Thought so. . . . I'll just.... Go."

The fact of the matter is, that the Irish as a race are just too lackadaisical for such official documents as driving licenses. Some of the most terrible drivers in the country possess full licenses. And it means nothing. I drive nearly every day, and it is always full of incident, near crashes, angry interactions with pedestrians, other drivers and, the worst of the worst, every drivers nightmare, CYCLISTS. I never return from a spell of driving, not sick to my very stomach with stress and fear, caused by the mere though of all the damage and death I could have caused. But that's just how it goes. I'm awaiting my first, proper accident with anticipation. My "Statement of Failure" is soon to be framed and placed on my wall of achievements.

Niamh (Speaks fluent Clingon)