Anytime I say this story, people laugh and I get shy so I don’t like talking about it. I mean in fact I’m posting it by this time because most people will be asleep anyway and the laughter might be way less. I was what? 18, 18 years when I started feeling a sudden urge to learn how to drive. It was even funny in the beginning to my brothers because as the only girl, I never really want to do any work. From what I had heard, driving was tiring sometimes and anything tiring at home? Count me out.
My brothers genuinely didn’t understand why I wanted to learn how to drive because it was not as if I would even drive them after knowing how to. So according to them, there was no point in teaching me. Wait, I mean who even said I was learning to drive them, I just wanted to flex here and there. My brothers didn’t even make any effort to teach me even the function of the steering wheel.
One particular vacation, my cousin came home with his new car and I just knew the right time had come. Right after I told my cousin, he agreed to teach me. In my head, so much flexing was going to go on that vacation. Imagine me with my glasses and all the flexing in the driver’s seat. I went for driving lessons just twice and I got all that I needed to be a chief driver( I’m actually laughing right now, because my palm looked tiny on the wheels).
Let’s skip to the interesting part. I learned the basics or so I thought. On the last day, my cousin asked that I drive us back home. I was like eh?? You say?? Honestly learning how to drive is easy but doing the actual thing? Hmm, first time driving for real. I drove us out of the car park where I was having the lessons and got on the main road. This is something I will never forget. Within that space of about 2 minutes that I left the lessons grounds, I had forgotten all that I learned. I was just accelerating and totally forgot about the thing called brake.
Right from no where, this old lady started crossing the road. Actually, I thought since she saw me coming, she would hurry and cross or something but she was even more slower than when we first saw her walking on the pavement. At that point, I was screaming what should I do? What should I do? And then my cousin was also responding with his own scream…”Daniella kill us o Daniella kill us”. Right before I got to the old lady I took a sharp turn and missed her probably by some decimal meters. I was scared and shivering. After turning, I just got down from the driver’s seat and asked my cousin to resume his seat because passenger princess is where I belong.
Have I tried driving after that day?of course, I’m a chief driver now but that’s another story for another day.
All images are mine