Learning how to drive a car can be a nerve-wracking experience. Abigail George recalls how she got thrown in at the deep end in the mean streets of Gqeberha.
I am 16 years old and my first car, my mother tells me excitedly, is in the driveway. She points at our battered, off-white Ford Escort, aka The Fair Lady. Although lacking in power and looks, the Escort purrs dutifully whenever she starts.
She's a sturdy vehicle made for family outings to the beach where we live in Port Elizabeth (now Gqeberha); a car for sandy feet and muddy boots and taking dogs to the vet. I look at my mom in disbelief. I doubt my father has sanctioned this decision. I can't drive yet, nor have I ever expressed a keen interest to do so.
But I go along with it and smile and act as if it's all hunky-dory. She puts the keys in my hand and tells me to park it. As I climb in, my father appears in the doorway. He's irate. My father does not want me to park the car.
"She's sixteen! She cannot park the car, Gerda. You park the car!" All I hear is that I'm sixteen. Maybe I'll be young forever.
Years passed and I was in my early twenties when I finally summoned up the courage to write the learner's exam. At least an exam was something I was good at.
I scored top marks on the written front and felt really proud of myself. But the real test, of course, lay ahead. The driving test, when you had to complete a faultless circuit of checking your blind spots, indicating at the right times, and all that.
Despite my mother's best efforts, I never got that far. My first driving lesson with a crazy-haired lady was terrible. I couldn't fit the key into the ignition of her Opel Corsa.
Once I got the car going and headed into the neighbourhood, people either hooted at me or yelled things like, "Give it some juice!", "Faster, faster!", "Go, go, go!" Well, I would if I could!
Afterwards, I went straight home, made a mug of coffee, put up my feet, reached for the remote and watched Paternity Court on TV. I'd rather watch "the ex" and "the baby-daddy" bash it out in a fake TV court battle than have to deal with changing lanes in the local streets.
My mother presented the crazy-haired lady with a large bouquet of flowers after the first lesson, as if she'd achieved something of historic significance. It was like she had won Wimbledon.
By the third lesson, the crazy-haired lady announced that I was ready to drive down the N2 highway. "Just don't take the Grahamstown (Makhanda) offramp!" she said. If you grew up in PE, you'll know this offramp - once you take it, you're stuck on the "wrong" road forever before you can turn back to the city.
Paranoid not to take that wrong offramp, I drove down the N2 feeling slightly out of touch with reality and completely out of my comfort zone. Questions flashed through my mind. When will this be over? Will I be in one piece when I get home?
To this day I still feel waves of anxiety whenever I see the Makhanda offramp - that crazy-haired driving instructor in her stiletto leather boots comes back to me in an instant.
Yes, stiletto leather boots! This was part of her standard uniform. And that's really half the reason why I eventually just stopped answering her calls. She also wore jewellery - in her hair! She was an ex-teacher and maybe she just felt like letting her hair down a bit during her retirement.
But it was shiny yellow-gold stuff that looked like necklaces hanging past her ear lobes. She was just a tad too eccentric for me.
During one lesson she made me stop at a filling station where she went inside the caf and bought a carton of milk. As we drove, she took sips with bursts of frenetic energy every now and then.
I couldn't deal, as they say.
A few lessons in, I nearly crashed into a car that was going much faster than my snail's pace. I wasn't going "Faster! Faster!" after all… During another lesson, a taxi tried to run me off the side of the road.
It was fair to say things weren't going well.Next, the crazy-haired lady got my mother's consent to use her car (also a Corsa) for the lessons because it was allegedly lighter on petrol than her own Corsa. This was almost the final straw. It was too stressful to have to learn to drive and potentially face the blame should anything happen to my mom's car.
I couldn't parallel park to save my life, but the instructor was patient - at least on the outside. Parallel parking was impossible for me. It felt like trying to untangle myself from a straitjacket while hurtling down Niagara Falls in a barrel.
Eventually, I just gave up trying to parallel park.
The next driving instructor had a Toyota Tazz and a pot belly hanging over his jeans. This distracted me no end. I couldn't concentrate on the road and swerved into the next lane. But it was the lane reserved for oncoming traffic and instinct kicked in, telling me I was going in the wrong direction.
I quickly swerved back into the lane I was supposed to be in. Luckily there were no other cars. It was just a quiet day in the suburbs of Malabar.
My new driving instructor was an ex-pupil of my mother's. He was a nice enough chap and liked libraries, he once told me. I liked libraries too, and that was almost enough.
He had recently welcomed a daughter into the world but things were not so rosy on the home front with his wife. He needed work, so he started a driving school. I think I had 15 lessons with him. By that point, I reckoned I'd definitely get the hang of being behind the wheel.
Parallel parking was impossible for me. It felt like trying to untangle myself from a straitjacket while hurtling down Niagara Falls in a barrel.
Guess who took it upon herself to volunteer one last time to teach me how to drive? My mother! She was a speed demon on the road. She'd get us to school in double-quick time. My mother learnt to drive in Johannesburg, not this "one-horse town" as she once said in passing.
My mother made me experience the longest 10 minutes of my life, when I had to tailgate a truck along one of the busiest streets in Gqeberha - Cape Road - in bumper-to-bumper traffic.
Another time, at an intersection, a blue-haired lady and her aunty entourage, all pedestrians, waited patiently for me to indicate and make my left turn so that they could cross the road.
They were watching me like hawks when I realised: I didn't indicate! But I was already turning left across their path, and it was too late…
My mother was very patient with me. She didn't shout, shriek, scream or yell. She simply said the words I was longing to hear: "I think that's enough for today. Let's go home." She never offered to give me another driving lesson, and I never asked.
Now, almost 20 years later, I still haven't learnt how to drive and I still don't feel like learning. I've realised that I'm more like the character played by Jessica Tandy in the 1989 movie Driving Miss Daisy.
I'm quite content to rely on family members and Uber drivers to take me where I want to go. And I would like to state that it will be this way for the rest of my natural-born life.
