The Fear of Becoming an Accidental Tourist

Lately I’ve been singing an old Roches song as I drive to work. Roche references are rarely a good sign in my life, evoking as they do a time (my early 20s) and a place (New York City) that are too easily filtered through exhaustion and nostalgia to create the Good Old Days. “Oh those golden times,” I think, scraping yogurt baby tracks from my skirt, picking Cheerios from my shoes, “when I was young and poor and could get through the entire Sunday paper on Sunday.”

Madness, of course. But in this case I am singing a particular song for the benefit of the younger generation. “We’re going away to Ireland soon,” I croon to my children who may never even know who the Roches were. “We’re going away to Ireland, Ireland, Ireland soon.”

It’s a goofy song, but in this case accurate. We are going to Ireland in one week and six days, but who’s counting? Neither me nor my husband, because we are too busy having the Car Conversation.

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Cars in Ireland, and most of the civilized world, are smaller than they are here. For many reasons. Gas is incredibly dear over there--well over $2 a gallon--the country roads are narrow and the cities and towns lean toward a medieval design. (Apparently, parallel parking was not an issue in those days.) And until recently, many, many people in Ireland were poor--many couldn’t afford cars, and those who did weren’t going to throw perfectly good money away on some gas-guzzling sedan.

This time, however, my husband is concerned that our family may have outgrown a cute car. He wants to upgrade; he even used--albeit only once--the term “minivan.” He obviously is not planning on doing any of the driving.

Which is fine with me. I love driving. I want to drive. Especially in Ireland. Friends think I’m crazy--some people I know refuse to visit countries where they drive on the “wrong side” of the road because the prospect is just too nerve-racking. In Ireland, they drive on the “wrong side” of the road and the “wrong side” of the car--the driver is on the right, as is the stick shift. (You will pay more than $150 extra for a standard rental.) This poses an enormous challenge for those of us with zero coordination skills (I could not learn to play the piano because it required my left hand to take some initiative for once.) But that is why I like to do it--because it is such a gorgeous challenge. Yet easier than playing the piano.

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Of course, those first few--OK, 50--miles are rather dramatic. The passenger side that seems so normally sized when on the right, now stretches for acres, for miles, making it impossible to judge the distance between the car and the road’s edge or, more important, oncoming traffic. Making a turn becomes a feat of advanced geometry and military bravura, and then there are the roundabouts.

Roundabouts are designed, purportedly, to make heavily trafficked intersections move more smoothly. Instead of having a cross pattern guarded by a light, there is a circle--drivers enter it, swirl around a bit and then exit it at the desired route.

I have been known to go round and round the roundabout as many as three times before figuring out which lane I should be in to make my escape. Meanwhile, there is much honking and nasty looks, and that’s only what’s going on inside my car. Roundabouts are the Irish equivalent of San Vicente, or the 110 to the 5 interchange--instruments of tourist torture.

To offset the tension of this initial driving experience, we have a few rules in my car. Passengers, or the adult ones, anyway, may not yell or swear. If we are in physical and immediate danger, a firmly raised voice is acceptable, but points are deducted for anger, hysteria, panic or judgment of any kind. Likewise, there will be no sudden gasps or in-drawn breaths, especially if referencing some perceived close call with a wall or other vehicle.

If passengers feel it necessary to clutch their seats, or work imaginary brakes, they must do so in a way that is not obvious to the driver, who is perfectly capable of pulling the car off the road, getting out and handing the keys to any comment-making, tongue-clucking companion at any time.

Not that this has ever happened.

There will be times, however, when on a narrow walled road in the middle of nowhere, the driver will take one look at the Guinness truck barreling toward her, do some quick mathematics and ask that the passengers just shut their eyes and pray.

Which works every time. Because we always have a small car.

Mary McNamara can be reached at mary.mcnamara@latimes.com.