A Little Victory

It is all becoming a bit familiar. For the fourth time I am sat nervously in the unpleasant waiting room waiting for my driving examiner to appear. For the fourth time my name is called, complete with surname mispronounced. For the fourth time I read a distant number plate and for the fourth time I turn the ignition whilst desperately hoping I won’t mess up.

The reversing manoeuvre seems to usually occur early on in the test and I know it is the weakest part of my driving. This time I’m asked to reverse around a corner. I failed my first test on this. Somehow, after a near panic due to some approaching vehicles, I manage to perform the manoeuvre successfully.

The driving test continues. The examiner asks me to stop somewhere and turns up the heating, despite the fact I feel like I am being roasted alive. I keep quiet, not wanting to upset the examiner in the slightest. He gives me some directions for the independent driving part of the test and as usual I have to really concentrate in order to remember them.

I inevitably end up stopped at a complicated set of traffic lights. I failed test two and three on similar sets, once because I wasn’t paying proper attention and once because I panicked. This time though I make it through, refusing to let traffic lights defeat me a third time, the little red, amber and green bastards.

Eventually I pull up outside the test centre. A quick check of my recent memory and I can’t think of anything I’ve done wrong. The examiner likes to add some drama to the moment. “Let me just finish filling out the form” he says. I worry this is a bad sign. In my failed test the examiners also made me wait to fill out a form. “I counted six minor errors” the examiner says impassively and there’s an enormous pause. What does this mean I wonder? How many errors are you allowed? Clearly aspiring to be a judge on a reality show, after an unnecessarily long silence the examiner announces that I have passed.

Even a few days later am I find the whole thing difficult to process. After eighteen months since my first lesson and three failed driving tests (and quite a large amount of money) I’d finally done it. I can now drive, like a proper, normal adult. The world is my oyster. Or perhaps the world is my road would be a more appropriate cliché in this instance.

I always knew I would find driving difficult. It’s because of my dyspraxia, although I didn’t even know I was dyspraxic when I started driving. I find practical things difficult and I learn new skills extraordinarily slowly. It has been a pretty awful experience, due to my constant fear (both of actual driving and my fear of failure). Not being able to do something that most eighteen year olds can do at aged twenty-two made me feel pretty inferior.

It’s something everyone goes through but passing my driving test feels like an especially big achievement for me. After failing in other parts of my life it’s so good to actually achieve something, especially something I have found challenging. The superstitious part of me thinks it is simply that 2014 was a cursed year for me and it was inevitable that my first test outside of 2014 would be a pass. As usual, I tell the superstitious me how foolish it is and give it a jolly good scolding for it’s impertinence at bringing these thoughts to the forefront of my mind.

I’m now in the process of finding a car to buy. I’ve never bought anything even vaguely as expensive as a car so this is a little daunting but also mega exciting. Within the next couple of weeks I shall be driving around in my very own little car like a normal adult human being. And I seriously can’t wait.

I always knew that the Dan 2.0 in my head would be someone that could drive a car. It has taken much longer than I either expected or hoped but I’ve got there in the end!