I want to talk to you about my driver’s test and my experience with drivers ed. So when I was approaching 15 and 1/2 or whatever it is that you’re supposed to start thinking about doing it — doing driver education. I noticed everyone else is really psyched or at least it seemed like everyone — everyone but I was not I was pretty nervous. I didn’t really feel comfortable with the idea of like being responsible for the car moving around and going different speeds. It’s funny looking back. I don’t remember — I mean nothing happened to me in a car, like I never gotten a serious car accident or anything. But for some reason I was just, terrifying to me especially idea of going like really really fast for some reason. So right away my instructor like the first day of class. We’re going to to drive around and I say “I’m really scared of going fast”. And he was like, “well everybody else is going to be driving normally but we’re taking you, specifically, to the highway right away”. So, you know that it’s safe and you can do it and not you know, not die, not have a car accident.
But then it came time for the actual test, and I’m you know breathing and I’m like everything’s going to be fine to myself, I’m sure. We get into the car and we do the parking part, which was also nerve-wracking obviously. Parking part goes fine. Okay, now we’re going to drive around. And I remember there’s like a — a — I remember very distinctly him asking like “okay if you were going to crash” like as we’re driving, “where would you, where would you aim for” and I was like, “oh for the for the tree over there” and he’s like, “that’s right don’t — like make sure you to pull away from traffic.” But the all, so that’s literally — I’m sure I did a lot of other things, but that’s the only other part that I remember besides, can you guess where we’re going with this, the part where I failed the test.
So we’re on the highway. We’re going to turn I’ve taken an exit I’ve literally never taken in my life. I’ve never taken this exit before in the moment all I thought was okay now I’m going to turn. So for those of you who are local to to the Zeeland areas of the Holland-Zeeland area, even if you’re not I guess, so I’m going to turn onto a part of Chicago Drive that’s divided. So I obviously do not complete the turn all the way to the right hand lane instead. I just turned immediately, because there are basically no cars there, because this exit is not used and this area of the road is like you’re leaving Zeeland and you’re heading out to Hudsonville. But like in the weirdest most, let’s go through the countryside way. And I remember that the the person giving me the test. The guy giving me the test did not panic. Even for a second there was no Panic displayed at all. He just said “you have turned the wrong way on the on this one way street and you will need to turn around.” And amazingly me, who had gotten so twisted up thinking about this test that I delayed it for like a year and half. I also did not panic and I thought well, I’ll have to turn around and I turned around and got to the right side of the highway and he said very calmly so “going the wrong way down a one-way Street means an automatic fail. So let’s go back” to I forget what he called it, you know the the parking lot. Let’s, let’s go back and I was so embarrassed. The best part is that this is right before my graduation and turning eighteen.