I recently picked up one of my favorite books, Jack by A.M. Homes.
In the book, the main character - a teenage boy - has some "scenes" in which he is learning to drive with his father and/or a driving instructor. Some of the moments are genuine and the author does a fantastic and insightful job in expressing the feelings of a teenage boy.
My favorite scene is when he is pulling into his driveway and he sees his next door neighbor backing out of the driveway. He immediately slams on his brakes thinking that the car might strike him. The driving instructor reacts and yells at Jack. He doesn't yell at him because Jack does anything wrong, but he yells at him to remember to NOT panic when he is driving. Jack allowed himself to get panicked and slammed short on the brakes.
I had a similar circumstance when I was learning to drive.
In the house I grew up in, we had a long driveway and in our initial driving lessons, my mother would put us in the driver's seat and we would cruise up and down the driveway...She would be kind and sensitive to us as new drivers and explain softly the way to slowly step on the gas and release the clutch. It took great patience...
Then... one day....
On one of the days we were doing this, the gas truck came to the house. He pulled into the driveway as I was about half way down. I hit the brake, put the car in reverse and went as far back as I could go. This wasn't out of the way for the truck driver. My mother told me to turn to the left and pull the car into the driveway. I was scared to do it as I had never done something like this before, but I hit the gas, released the clutch, turned the steering wheel, and headed the 30 feet towards the house.
That's when the panic set in. I can not explain even to this day why I panicked. Instead of calmly driving towards the garage, I panicked and felt as though the gas truck was coming straight at me and was going to wreck the car...stupid... I know.
Well... instead of actually getting the car IN the garage, I HIT the side of the garage on the outside. Imagine a large two car garage door. It is a pretty big whole and hard to miss, but yours truly found a way to do so. The right side of the garage was a bright red and I directed the right side of the car into that. I wasn't going very fast, but I must have moved the house about 5 feet with the front of the car. It took a guy with a crowbar to literally move the house back into place.
The rest of the night is a haze. I don't remember being yelled at and I don't remember much else about the specifics of the event... but I do remember getting a valuable lesson about not panicking. It has served me well and I have spun out several times while driving in poor conditions and not once have I ever panicked.
When all is said and done... I love being able to say things like this..."You hit a deer? That's nothing... I hit a house"...
And my wife wonders why I am I absolutely paranoid about hitting other cars in parking lots...
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