I had a very sheltered upbringing - on the Upper East Side of New York. I was very fortunate to have been afforded a most excellent education at The Convent of the Sacred Heart on 91st Street & Fifth Avenue. It was an unusual time to be growing up anyway - the times they were indeed a-changing.
The academic program was, and still is, of the highest order and though I don't know if such a thing even exists anymore, I vaguely remember a very tepid sort of Home Economics class (or club, maybe?) I just know that I didn't have to take it. The reason this course was not emphasized was that it was just presumed that a young lady of the Sacred Heart would have staff.
Another elective that was not offered (although I don't believe it was offered at either Spence or Nightingale - two other private girls schools in the immediate area) was driving. As New Yorkers, we mostly walked and/or were driven. Getting one's driving license just wasn't the milestone for us that it was for, you know, everyone else in the world. Or America at least.
The first driving license I had was in the mid-1980's when I first lived on Anguilla (the northern most of the Leeward Islands). There we drove in "American" cars (steering wheel on the left) BUT as Anguilla is a British dependent territory (British West Indies) we drove on the left side of the road.
This is helpful nowhere.
The first American driving license was issued to me in the early 1990's in Montana when I was splitting my year between Missoula and Anguilla. I then spent the next decade driving on the right hand side of the road for half of the year and the left hand side for the other half.
Because of the impediments that came with driving on Anguilla - goats leaping into the middle of the road from out of nowhere, pot-holes that could swallow a small car and confused tourists trying to negotiate the roundabouts AND remember that they need to stay on the left hand side of the road, I have always been a very vigilant driver but because so many others are not, I am also a very anxious driver.
To be honest, it is not always the other driver, most of my life is anxiety driven.
I don't like driving on highways, don't like driving fast, not a fan of the windy road, get claustrophobic if I am surrounded by a lot of traffic, am now quite night-blind and still, to this day, when I am in a new place, I have to remember to drive on the right-hand side of the road until I get used to it.
Arkansas, it turns out, appears to be mostly winding two lane highways. I am now quite confident in making my way from home to our small town and its environs but it will still be a while before I can do the drive to Fayetteville. A) There is construction going on and those flashing lights and stripedy barrels only serve to confuse me (on top of the anxiety), 2) There is a LOT of traffic and C, D, E & F) I don't know where anything is.
Anyway, my friend Alex (also not his real name and coincidentally my friend Dee's older son (still not her name either)) is having some transportation issues just now and needs a lift to and from work. For the most part Dee takes him in the morning and I collect him in the afternoon. A couple of weeks ago I got a call asking if I might go for Alex in the truck as he had something large to bring home.
Holy crap - the White Rhino! The first time I'd seen Dee in over 30 years - she pulled up to the airport in this giant white truck, opened her door, slid out and then disappeared from sight for a few seconds before she came around the front of the truck. It's taken a while and I am now reasonably proficient at getting in and out of the passenger side with a modicum of dignity and a minimum of swearing but it is one big-ass truck.
I went up to Dee's house to swap my golf cart for the White Rhino and it had already been considerately parked in a manner that allowed me to just get in and drive. No having to reverse out and negotiate the parking area - just climb in and off I go. Well, the whole thing scared the crap out of me but it was time to suck it up and in the words of the philosopher, Nike, "Just do it!"
I would just briefly like to mention, as an aside, that if it is normal for your vehicle to have lights on that usually signify that something might be wrong, a heads-up could probably be helpful in the elimination of visions of the vehicle exploding before the completion of the task. There are almost no vehicles from this century on the compound so almost everything has its own eccentricities - as do many of the best people...
I pulled into the drive of Alex's job and he directed me to follow him around this building so he could load-in his stuff. Once the task was completed he said, "OK, just turn the truck around and I'll meet you over there" gesturing vaguely in the direction in which we had come.
Umm - what's that now? Just turn the truck around? Like, go backwards and then forward again? Well, it had never crossed my mind that I would have to turn this mother around - but then again, I reckoned that anything short of an actual building that might be behind me would not win in a confrontation with The White Rhino and so I wrestled that gear shift to R and then back over to D and we were outta there.
Once I knew we were on our way back to the farm and that we would be in Drive for the rest of the trip I was able to enjoy the powerful feeling of driving a big old truck. I totally get it. Sitting eleventy feet above the ground and thinking:
"I am The White Rhino - bow to me!"
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