Driving In the Rain

The rain that abruptly, but strongly poured this afternoon couldn’t have been the best setting for my first driving lessons ever. Given my current unemployed status at twenty-three, I finally gave in to the need of possibly filling the “part-time-driver-job” in the family. This personal submission was most importantly brought about by my mother’s plodding on securing myself a driver’s license before my student permit expires a year from now. She paid for it a couple of months ago when we applied for it, and she simply wouldn’t want to put it into waste, since she said that I have the tendency of putting off equally vital things until I cannot make good use of them.

Now ask anyone in the house and all of them would go unison in telling that I am definitely the least to take interest in learning how to drive. My so-I-think-I-WAS-a-DIVA attitude back in highschool, at the time when my brother and younger sister were already taught to run the wheels, gave excuses to just learning when I already get my own car, and even had the nerve to joke about hiring a driver anyway for me to bother. Haha.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I never was and will never be a primadonna. I know how jeepneys go as much as the drivers who own them-- in dealing with their daily harassment of the streets, I mean. I guess at that time, cars were not my I-dig’s. And yeah, it was just plain laziness and the little fear of contributing to car bruises.

Now that’s the joy in having an older guy in the house like my cousin to teach me the basics because it makes me feel like I’m as strong of a man as he is. I must say that I have become more willing to venture on new things than before, and so even with those car wipers in front of me because of the rain, I finally got our car moving :-)

It wasn’t that hard after all, though it numbed my legs big time. Especially the left leg parallel to the clutch that I had to step on as I moved our manually-geared car in that fenced open space in front of our house and beside the village chapel. I sure had a number of restart-up’s, mostly because of not stepping on the clutch properly. Minutes before the actual driving, I was already close to raising a brow on my cousin as he did the teacher-student talk, explaining how the car’s main engine, the transmission and those round plates drawn in his book that he used as material for the tutorial, connect to one another, and further explaining how the clutch, which as he made it appear is the most important part of the car, is making it all happen for the car to have its smoothest ride.

I do the shift on the transmission gear, and I step on the clutch. I step on the accelerator, I then step on the clutch. I take on the brakes, I still step on the clutch.

I could now understand why. My left leg should learn to keep up with it too.

And with how I am realistically experiencing things-- working my ass off, quitting a job to leave me bankrupt, then hoping for the better one-- my dream would probably just end to saving for a car. I don't think I could afford a personal driver anymore. I think I'm ready to make myself a slave for the wheels. ;-)