A year of living dangerously…

A year ago I was fortunate enough to be offered an opportunity to experience some “practice” laps with the Triple Eight racing team.

Hurtling into a corner at 180 km per hour and roaring down the straight at over 200 km per hour may not be everyone’s glass of chardonnay, but it’s definitely mine! Unbuckling myself from the passenger seat and reaching for the stationary tarmac, I felt my legs begin to give way and my lips curling inwards. But I’d loved every second. The adrenaline rush was mind blowing.

During the last two weeks I’ve been receiving a similar rush of adrenaline on a daily basis. Sadly however there has been no pleasure. Only fear…

The reason is that along with several thousand other Queensland parents I’ve been forced to help teach my son to drive. Under new Government regulations each learner driver must complete 100 hours training before they can sit for their test. Unless you belong to the Packer family and can afford driving school prices for the entire 100 hours it means that you the parent must shoulder a large part of the responsibility-and danger!

My wife initially strapped in for one half hour, but returned a gibbering wreck and had to take the day off work to cope with the accumulated stress. So it’s been left to Last Man Standing. That’s me.

Now I should be fair and point out that my son Liam shows every indication of being a very good driver down the track. It’s just that we’re not down the track yet and in the meantime there are tricky little manoeuvres such as turning corners, changing lanes and passing to master.

These have to be perfected while avoiding bicycles, pedestrians and oncoming trucks and buses. Bear in mind that unlike driving school vehicles, the family car does not have dual sets of brakes. If you see imminent disaster you cannot slam on the brakes. All you can do is yell hysterically while pushing your foot through a brake free floor onto the bitumen below.

On top of that there’s the growing realisation that as soon as other drivers spot the L plates they immediately decide to pull out in front of you at the last minute or squeeze you off the road for no apparent reason. They also delight in honking horns that sound like air raid sirens, for any minor transgression, such as travelling at 58 km per hour in a 60km zone.

If you think wearing L plates means other drivers will gave you a bit of space and exercise courtesy, forget it.

Coming off the Toowong roundabout and trying to get into the lane that heads to Mount Cootha in Brisbane, we received what we though was a “go ahead” wave from a comely blonde in a trendy blue Golf.

When we tried to merge she immediately accelerated, trying to cut us off while yelling obscenities that would make Ozzie Osbourne blush and honking her horn with her one free hand. (The other was clutching a mobile phone).

Apparently the wave was actually performed as part of demonstrative mobile phone conversation and she was obviously not in a courteous mood. I explained to my son that just because a woman looks like Jennifer Hawkins it doesn’t necessarily follow that the brain and personality will follow suit. To be fair however, this is more of a lesson in life and applies equally to males and females.

When your offspring successfully passes the written exam to obtain their learners permit, they’ll return with a video and informational booklet for the instructor. That’s you.

This contains all sorts of useful information about what they need to practice. (Recognising hazards, sharing the road with pedestrians and cyclists, changing lanes, negotiating roundabouts etc). However there’s an important topic left uncovered.

How do you maintain a calm and reflective exterior while internally having a major stress attack every 50 yards? Valium is not recommended, neither is scotch. Besides, the booklet also points out that the Instructor must be completely sober at all times. This immediately quashed any thoughts I had about clocking up the hours by being driven home from the pub on a regular basis.

But so far so good! We’ve only had one “near miss” and according to my son this shouldn’t count because he hadn’t actually seen it. For the record it was a “Beamer” and probably worth more than my house.

But we’ve yet to tackle parking. This worries me because aforementioned son  has more than a fair sprinkling of his mother’s genes. In every other aspect of life this is a plus. Patience, sobriety and a love of animals to name but a few…. But ability to park is not one of them.

I still don’t understand how she eventually passed her test after the 22 driving lessons. To pass you have to reverse park and to the best of my knowledge she has not reverse parked in the ensuing 18 years. Parking then, looms as providing yet another major stress attack. We briefly attempted it the other day using garbage bins to double as cars, but we appeared to be doing it more by “feel” than sight and I’m writing to the Council this week to request another bin.

I’m sure we’ll get through it and Liam may well go on to become another Peter Brock. In the meantime I’m reminded of some of the dialogue from the classic Bob Newhart sketch “The Driving Instructor.”

“Ok Mrs Webb. If you’d like to reverse back down the driveway…”

Pause

Sighing. “Aaah, now we hit someone Mrs Webb”

Pause

“The flashing red light blinded you…”

Pause

“The flashing red light on the car you hit blinded you….”

Only another 85 hours to go! Good luck and may your God go with you!

image: Heather Durdil