The Road We Live: Thoughts of a Neophyte Driver

Youth Speak! By Leticia Cheng, LCHS Class of 2005 and Valley Sun Intern

I had my first driving lesson this week and wow - it’s pretty scary out there!

It’s somewhat terrifying knowing that you’re in complete control of the car and that even a couple seconds can alter your life. Not to mention that driving a car is like a test of your concentration and attention span. Anything can happen during those moments when your mind wanders and is no longer focused on the road - a giant SUV can suddenly swerve into your lane, two 7-year-olds can unexpectedly dash into the street to retrieve a ball or your driving instructor might out of the blue be yelling, “Go faster, faster! It’s just a bird!”

My driving instructor is this eccentric, hirsute smoker with such a thick accent that when he says the word “steering wheel” it sounds more like “string bean.” One moment he can be perfectly calm chatting about his trip to Jerusalem in the ‘70s and the next moment he’ll be bellowing in my ear to speed up so I can pass the yellow light before it turns red. Definitely not a model driver.

In addition to encouraging me to run over small creatures and to not slow down when traffic lights are yellow, he doesn’t seem to mind that I’ll be driving nearly 80 mph on the freeway. When I have to make right or left turns he for some reason always calls me lazy because I either end up too close to the curb or in the wrong lane.

After I manage to get the car back in the correct position he tells me to help my mom with the dishes more so I won’t be so lazy. He also frequently reminds me to not grip the steering wheel so tightly and to relax because he’s not a murderer and doesn’t plan on killing me since I look like his daughter. Somehow, that doesn’t really make me hold onto the string bean any less forcefully.

Yet, peculiar teachers aside, I think driving a car is in some ways a metaphor of life. The road we travel on is the life we live and we try to be in control of the car, just as we to have control of our lives. Sometimes we’ll be involved in messy accidents. Occasionally we’ll have to apologize to our fellow “drivers” for some stupid blunder we made. Every now and then life can be pretty peaceful and uneventful while at other times it’s stressful and busy. There are always nice drivers, as well as angry ones and ones who drive and live fast.

So, while at one point or another we’ll have to put up with some oddball characters in our lives, we all have to gain proper control of our life and learn to be courteous and help one another out so that the road we travel is somewhat easier to deal with.