Feb. 10: How I learned to drive
I learned to drive twice. First I learned to drive, then I learned to drive a standard.
Let's take them one at a time.
I got my license in the summer of 1990 just before I entered Grade 12. Before I did that, I had to endure driving lessons, which took place in the spring of 1989 at the Chinook Driving School, which was located at the Canyon Meadows Plaza. My schooling was divided into two parts - 15 hours of classroom work and 20 hours of on-the-road experience.
The classes were taught by a fat guy who liked to eat hoagies. He said that he had driven all over the world and - as far as he was concerned - the four worst cities to drive in were Cairo, Tokyo, New York City and "the fourth one you're sitting in right now."
He was talking about Calgary.
The average classroom session involved lectures, studying our driving manuals, listening to the instructor tell stories (some of which had nothing to do with driving) and watching short films. Most of the films starred Goofy. Some of them didn't. There was one from the 1960s where a professional driver and a professional actor drove around a busy city with a movie camera attached to the back of the car. The camera was pointing forward so we could see the backs of the driver and actor. As the driver drove, he talked and beeped his horn a lot. He believed that the horn was misrepresented. "People think honking your horn is a sign of aggression," he said. "Actually, it's a courtesy. It just lets people know to watch out."
I missed the final day so I had to go on Monday to take the exam. I was sequestered in a room with a girl named Vera, who I knew was the older sister of Debbie, a girl I went to high school with. Debbie didn't like me because I was not cool. I asked Vera if she was Debbie's sister - even though I knew she was - and Vera nodded and went back to her exam. I decided not to ask Vera for a date. (Facebook tells me that she lives in Calgary and likes to wear sunglasses and sit in lounge chairs, but that is all I care to know about her.)
*
I now feel the need to tell a story about Debbie. I do not feel guilty for this because my personal style, when I write these notes, is to go in whatever direction the muse takes me. Now the muse wants me to tell a Debbie story.
Debbie was in my Grade 9 class. She played the oboe. I think she was the only one in the whole school who played the oboe. Oboe reeds are expensive. Once I met a professional oboe player who told me oboists get paid a lot of money. "Why?" I asked. "Danger pay," he said. He told me that playing the oboe is hard on your body and because of this, oboe players tend to die sooner (there are lots of oboe players in the 27 club.) Someone needs to invent a safer oboe. Also, someone should change the name. If a word only has four letters, three of them should not be vowels (this is why I don't like Oreos.)
As I may have said before, Debbie was cool. Debbie was popular. She was popular even though she played the oboe, which, other than the bassoon, is the nerdiest instrument ever. Sometimes I would see Debbie at school dances and I would ask her to dance but she would always shake her head. Debbie didn't like me but I never disliked her. I always just sort of assumed that she was existing on this different wavelength than me - like I was on the nerd wavelength and she was on the cool person wavelength. Debbie was the sort of person who decided what the number one song on AM 106's Top Ten at Ten would be simply by calling the station. Once I saw her eat a grapefruit. Another time I heard her tell her friend April, who sat right behind me in Mr. Luterbach's math class, that she had drank Slimfast that morning. Debbie was using the pencil sharpener as she talked to April and I was right between April and Debbie and the pencil that Debbie was sharpening in the pencil sharpener. I wanted to tell Debbie that she didn't need Slimfast - that she was a pretty girl without the Slimfast - but I didn't because I didn't think Debbie would appreciate hearing that from me. (Also I thought I'd get beat up.)
But none of these things are the Debbie story. The Debbie story happened when we were in Grade 9 and we were at Father Welihan Junior High School, where we went every Friday to take either home ec or shop class. (In Grade 8, the boys took shop for 75 per cent of the year and home ec for the other 25 per cent. The ratios were reversed for the girls. In Grade 9, it was all co-ed and we took home ec and shop equally. Someone on the Calgary Catholic School Board must have decried that practice as sexist.) Also, I feel compelled to note that it was in the playground of Father Welihan that I received my first kiss. The date was February 13, 1987. I was 14. I remember the girl's name but I won't reveal it here.
Okay, back to the Debbie story.
Debbie and I were in the same home ec group. Home ec was divided into two segments - cooking and sewing. Our teacher told us we could make sweatshirts or shorts. I decided to make shorts.
I can't make shorts.
My mom took me to Fabricland so I could buy fabric. The fabric I picked was sky blue and it had a recurring pattern of tennis shoes, soccer balls and yellow stars. I took the fabric to home ec class and I cut out the patterns and I followed the instructions and I ran my shorts-shaped pieces of fabric through the sewing machine and I came up with a pair of shorts that sort of looked like shorts and sort of looked like a map of Africa that someone had barfed on. The teacher had me put on the shorts. Then she had me stand on a chair so she could do some repair work.
As I was standing there, Debbie walked into the room. She was holding a container of pins and as soon as she saw me, she shrieked laughter. The pins flew everywhere. Debbie ran back to her friends so she could urge them to come see Shteevie and his stupid looking shorts.
There was this brief instant where I wanted to be angry, or hurt, at Debbie's reaction. But it passed. I had no illusions that I would one day be a tailor or a fashion designer. What's more, I didn't want to be a good tailor or fashion designer. But I gave that assignment my best and I even wore the shorts for a while until my mom threw them away.
But those shorts were good for something. They made Debbie laugh. They made Debbie happy. And for that, I am happy that the shorts existed for a brief period in 1987.
Even though Debbie thought I was a nerd.
*
The week after I wrote the driving exam was the week my practical lessons started. It was after supper on a Monday evening when there was a knock at the door. It was a guy in a mustache and sunglasses and blue jeans and a Crocodile shirt. I don't remember his name so I will call him Bob. Bob was five-foot-seven. I know he was five-foot-seven because I tried to tell him I was five-foot-seven and he assured me I wasn't because I was shorter than him. He said I was probably five-foot-six. "Five-foot-six-and-a-half," I said indignantly. He told me to just stick with five-foot-six lest I sound desperate. I am a leetle man.
The practice car was blue. Bob sat in the passenger seat. There was an extra brake pedal on the floor of his side so he could press it if I was about to do something stupid. I did lots of stupid things as I learned to drive.
Bob had me drive all over Calgary. Everyday we went downtown so I could see the hookers, who gathered along third avenue back then. I didn't particularly like hookers. I just wanted Bob to think I was more mature than I was. Once Bob told me that he was a casual acquaintance of Lee Emmerson, the lead vocalist and guitarist for the Canadian rock band, Five Man Electrical Band, and the writer of the group's most successful song, Signs. "Ever hear that song?" he asked. "It's a classic. Then he sang:
And the sign said,
"Anybody caught trespassin'
Will be shot on sight."
So I jumped on the fence and I yelled at the house,
"Hey! What gives you the right
To put up a fence to keep me out,
But to keep Mother Nature in?
If God was here, he'd tell you to your face,
'Man, you're some kind of sinner.'"
Once Bob took me to Peter's Drive-in and bought me a milkshake. Another time, he told me that after a wedding party, he and his friend had gotten really drunk, taken the limo down to Third Avenue, picked up a couple of hookers and paid them to have a steamy makeout session in the back. "It was a blast," he told me.
Toward the end of our week, I still hadn't learned how to parallel park. Yield signs still made me nervous and I wasn't at all happy with driving on gravel roads. I told Bob that I probably wasn't meant to drive and I should just give it up.
"That's a cop out," Bob said. "Driving a car is a blast. It's also a necessity these days. You don't get good at something overnight. You have to work on it."
He put a hand on my shoulder and said: "I've given you all the tools I can over the past week. Your dad will be able to teach you more. I know you'll get your license sooner rather than later."
Well, it was later. I took the driver's test four times before I actually passed. The first time I didn't even get out of the parking lot. The third time I failed for turning the wrong way on to a one way street.
My dad had driven me to the testing facility each one of those times. After my third fail, I thought he'd given up on me. So I decided I wasn't going to burden him with another request. I would book the test myself and get down there on my own. This I did thanks to Calgary Public Transit. Fourth time was the charm. I got my license.
I went home jubilant. My dad was happy (though not overjoyed) and he said that I could take the old K-Car in the garage out for a spin if I wanted. My mom made me promise not to take it on Deerfoot Trail.
I promised.
I lied.
*
For those of you who have never been to Calgary, the Deerfoot Trail is like a great big race track. It is the city's biggest and quickest north-to-south thoroughfare and the speed limit is 100 kmph. Char hates driving on Deerfoot Trail. I love it.
Love it.
I especially love it if it's a hot summer day and my windows are down and the sunroof is open and the stereo us turned up to 40 and it blaring Van Halen sing Me Wise Magic.
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!
*
I took the K-Car to Haysboro to see if my best friend, Jason, was home. Jason was not. Dejected, I started to drive back and that's when I saw Larry walking up the street.
Larry saw me.
I pulled over.
Larry ran and jumped into the passenger seat of the car. He looked at me and we both burst into hysterical gales of laughter. We knew that a new chapter in our friendship had opened. Shteevie had his license. That meant transportation. That meant possibility.
I had a cassette tape of the Purple Rain soundtrack which I slid into the K-Car's tape player. Prince started singing Let's Go Crazy.
Fun fact: I have owned six cars. In every single one of them, I made sure Let's Go Crazy was the first song I listened to. This will never change.
--
At the beginning of this note, I promised there would be a part 2 - me learning how to drive a standard.
Well, I'm kind of out of gas right now (the analogy fits, doesn't it.) I guess my creative juice has dried up. I blame Debbie.
So I'll just sort of give a Reader's Digest synopsis of part 2.
I was 20 and I wanted to buy my own car and I had $1500 to do it and a guy named Trevor Marx had a 1981 Mazda GLC, which he sold me for $1,350. It was beige. It was also a standard. I didn't want to buy it because it was a standard but my dad told me he'd help me learn to drive it.
I thought I'd hate it. But 20 years later, I freakin love standards. In fact, I won't buy a car that's not a standard. Someone once told me that you actually drive standards. With automatics, all you do is point them. I love that witticism and I have adopted it for whenever I talk cars.
People who are afraid of standards are wusses.
And that, my friends, is how I learned to drive.
Let's take them one at a time.
I got my license in the summer of 1990 just before I entered Grade 12. Before I did that, I had to endure driving lessons, which took place in the spring of 1989 at the Chinook Driving School, which was located at the Canyon Meadows Plaza. My schooling was divided into two parts - 15 hours of classroom work and 20 hours of on-the-road experience.
Holy Crap! It's still there.
The classes were taught by a fat guy who liked to eat hoagies. He said that he had driven all over the world and - as far as he was concerned - the four worst cities to drive in were Cairo, Tokyo, New York City and "the fourth one you're sitting in right now."
He was talking about Calgary.
The average classroom session involved lectures, studying our driving manuals, listening to the instructor tell stories (some of which had nothing to do with driving) and watching short films. Most of the films starred Goofy. Some of them didn't. There was one from the 1960s where a professional driver and a professional actor drove around a busy city with a movie camera attached to the back of the car. The camera was pointing forward so we could see the backs of the driver and actor. As the driver drove, he talked and beeped his horn a lot. He believed that the horn was misrepresented. "People think honking your horn is a sign of aggression," he said. "Actually, it's a courtesy. It just lets people know to watch out."
Watch this cartoon and get 10 per cent off car insurance.
I missed the final day so I had to go on Monday to take the exam. I was sequestered in a room with a girl named Vera, who I knew was the older sister of Debbie, a girl I went to high school with. Debbie didn't like me because I was not cool. I asked Vera if she was Debbie's sister - even though I knew she was - and Vera nodded and went back to her exam. I decided not to ask Vera for a date. (Facebook tells me that she lives in Calgary and likes to wear sunglasses and sit in lounge chairs, but that is all I care to know about her.)
*
I now feel the need to tell a story about Debbie. I do not feel guilty for this because my personal style, when I write these notes, is to go in whatever direction the muse takes me. Now the muse wants me to tell a Debbie story.
Debbie was in my Grade 9 class. She played the oboe. I think she was the only one in the whole school who played the oboe. Oboe reeds are expensive. Once I met a professional oboe player who told me oboists get paid a lot of money. "Why?" I asked. "Danger pay," he said. He told me that playing the oboe is hard on your body and because of this, oboe players tend to die sooner (there are lots of oboe players in the 27 club.) Someone needs to invent a safer oboe. Also, someone should change the name. If a word only has four letters, three of them should not be vowels (this is why I don't like Oreos.)
Warning: Playing this could be hazardous to your health
As I may have said before, Debbie was cool. Debbie was popular. She was popular even though she played the oboe, which, other than the bassoon, is the nerdiest instrument ever. Sometimes I would see Debbie at school dances and I would ask her to dance but she would always shake her head. Debbie didn't like me but I never disliked her. I always just sort of assumed that she was existing on this different wavelength than me - like I was on the nerd wavelength and she was on the cool person wavelength. Debbie was the sort of person who decided what the number one song on AM 106's Top Ten at Ten would be simply by calling the station. Once I saw her eat a grapefruit. Another time I heard her tell her friend April, who sat right behind me in Mr. Luterbach's math class, that she had drank Slimfast that morning. Debbie was using the pencil sharpener as she talked to April and I was right between April and Debbie and the pencil that Debbie was sharpening in the pencil sharpener. I wanted to tell Debbie that she didn't need Slimfast - that she was a pretty girl without the Slimfast - but I didn't because I didn't think Debbie would appreciate hearing that from me. (Also I thought I'd get beat up.)
Debbie doesn't need this.
But none of these things are the Debbie story. The Debbie story happened when we were in Grade 9 and we were at Father Welihan Junior High School, where we went every Friday to take either home ec or shop class. (In Grade 8, the boys took shop for 75 per cent of the year and home ec for the other 25 per cent. The ratios were reversed for the girls. In Grade 9, it was all co-ed and we took home ec and shop equally. Someone on the Calgary Catholic School Board must have decried that practice as sexist.) Also, I feel compelled to note that it was in the playground of Father Welihan that I received my first kiss. The date was February 13, 1987. I was 14. I remember the girl's name but I won't reveal it here.
Okay, back to the Debbie story.
Debbie and I were in the same home ec group. Home ec was divided into two segments - cooking and sewing. Our teacher told us we could make sweatshirts or shorts. I decided to make shorts.
I can't make shorts.
My mom took me to Fabricland so I could buy fabric. The fabric I picked was sky blue and it had a recurring pattern of tennis shoes, soccer balls and yellow stars. I took the fabric to home ec class and I cut out the patterns and I followed the instructions and I ran my shorts-shaped pieces of fabric through the sewing machine and I came up with a pair of shorts that sort of looked like shorts and sort of looked like a map of Africa that someone had barfed on. The teacher had me put on the shorts. Then she had me stand on a chair so she could do some repair work.
As I was standing there, Debbie walked into the room. She was holding a container of pins and as soon as she saw me, she shrieked laughter. The pins flew everywhere. Debbie ran back to her friends so she could urge them to come see Shteevie and his stupid looking shorts.
There was this brief instant where I wanted to be angry, or hurt, at Debbie's reaction. But it passed. I had no illusions that I would one day be a tailor or a fashion designer. What's more, I didn't want to be a good tailor or fashion designer. But I gave that assignment my best and I even wore the shorts for a while until my mom threw them away.
But those shorts were good for something. They made Debbie laugh. They made Debbie happy. And for that, I am happy that the shorts existed for a brief period in 1987.
Even though Debbie thought I was a nerd.
*
The week after I wrote the driving exam was the week my practical lessons started. It was after supper on a Monday evening when there was a knock at the door. It was a guy in a mustache and sunglasses and blue jeans and a Crocodile shirt. I don't remember his name so I will call him Bob. Bob was five-foot-seven. I know he was five-foot-seven because I tried to tell him I was five-foot-seven and he assured me I wasn't because I was shorter than him. He said I was probably five-foot-six. "Five-foot-six-and-a-half," I said indignantly. He told me to just stick with five-foot-six lest I sound desperate. I am a leetle man.
The practice car was blue. Bob sat in the passenger seat. There was an extra brake pedal on the floor of his side so he could press it if I was about to do something stupid. I did lots of stupid things as I learned to drive.
Bob had me drive all over Calgary. Everyday we went downtown so I could see the hookers, who gathered along third avenue back then. I didn't particularly like hookers. I just wanted Bob to think I was more mature than I was. Once Bob told me that he was a casual acquaintance of Lee Emmerson, the lead vocalist and guitarist for the Canadian rock band, Five Man Electrical Band, and the writer of the group's most successful song, Signs. "Ever hear that song?" he asked. "It's a classic. Then he sang:
And the sign said,
"Anybody caught trespassin'
Will be shot on sight."
So I jumped on the fence and I yelled at the house,
"Hey! What gives you the right
To put up a fence to keep me out,
But to keep Mother Nature in?
If God was here, he'd tell you to your face,
'Man, you're some kind of sinner.'"
It's a Canadian classic
Once Bob took me to Peter's Drive-in and bought me a milkshake. Another time, he told me that after a wedding party, he and his friend had gotten really drunk, taken the limo down to Third Avenue, picked up a couple of hookers and paid them to have a steamy makeout session in the back. "It was a blast," he told me.
Toward the end of our week, I still hadn't learned how to parallel park. Yield signs still made me nervous and I wasn't at all happy with driving on gravel roads. I told Bob that I probably wasn't meant to drive and I should just give it up.
"That's a cop out," Bob said. "Driving a car is a blast. It's also a necessity these days. You don't get good at something overnight. You have to work on it."
He put a hand on my shoulder and said: "I've given you all the tools I can over the past week. Your dad will be able to teach you more. I know you'll get your license sooner rather than later."
Well, it was later. I took the driver's test four times before I actually passed. The first time I didn't even get out of the parking lot. The third time I failed for turning the wrong way on to a one way street.
My dad had driven me to the testing facility each one of those times. After my third fail, I thought he'd given up on me. So I decided I wasn't going to burden him with another request. I would book the test myself and get down there on my own. This I did thanks to Calgary Public Transit. Fourth time was the charm. I got my license.
I went home jubilant. My dad was happy (though not overjoyed) and he said that I could take the old K-Car in the garage out for a spin if I wanted. My mom made me promise not to take it on Deerfoot Trail.
I promised.
I lied.
*
For those of you who have never been to Calgary, the Deerfoot Trail is like a great big race track. It is the city's biggest and quickest north-to-south thoroughfare and the speed limit is 100 kmph. Char hates driving on Deerfoot Trail. I love it.
Love it.
I especially love it if it's a hot summer day and my windows are down and the sunroof is open and the stereo us turned up to 40 and it blaring Van Halen sing Me Wise Magic.
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!
*
I took the K-Car to Haysboro to see if my best friend, Jason, was home. Jason was not. Dejected, I started to drive back and that's when I saw Larry walking up the street.
Larry saw me.
I pulled over.
Larry ran and jumped into the passenger seat of the car. He looked at me and we both burst into hysterical gales of laughter. We knew that a new chapter in our friendship had opened. Shteevie had his license. That meant transportation. That meant possibility.
I had a cassette tape of the Purple Rain soundtrack which I slid into the K-Car's tape player. Prince started singing Let's Go Crazy.
Fun fact: I have owned six cars. In every single one of them, I made sure Let's Go Crazy was the first song I listened to. This will never change.
I'm part of Shteevie's life soundtrack. Deal with it.
--
At the beginning of this note, I promised there would be a part 2 - me learning how to drive a standard.
Well, I'm kind of out of gas right now (the analogy fits, doesn't it.) I guess my creative juice has dried up. I blame Debbie.
So I'll just sort of give a Reader's Digest synopsis of part 2.
I was 20 and I wanted to buy my own car and I had $1500 to do it and a guy named Trevor Marx had a 1981 Mazda GLC, which he sold me for $1,350. It was beige. It was also a standard. I didn't want to buy it because it was a standard but my dad told me he'd help me learn to drive it.
I thought I'd hate it. But 20 years later, I freakin love standards. In fact, I won't buy a car that's not a standard. Someone once told me that you actually drive standards. With automatics, all you do is point them. I love that witticism and I have adopted it for whenever I talk cars.
People who are afraid of standards are wusses.
And that, my friends, is how I learned to drive.
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