Driving instructor A. B.
One of my Twitter mutuals, who happens to be in the process of getting her driver’s licence, said a few hours ago that she was ‘spinning around in work chair and imitating different fire truck sirens from around the world’. All this brought to mind my driving instructor.
Despite the tragedy that coincided with that time (which I already mentioned at the end of Esperanza), I have fond memories of driving lessons, first during the summer holidays and then during the first weeks of university.
My sister got her driver’s licence at a late age, I don’t remember at which school. My brother got his in the army (where he volunteered at sixteen and was assigned to be a chauffeur for a high-ranking officer). My mother told me a lot about the instructor who had helped her get her licence when I was an infant. It sparked my curiosity, and when the time came, I enrolled at the same driving school.
In addition to being a competent teacher in practical classes, my mother had described him to me as sexist, a womaniser, and rude — although, exceptionally, he always treated her with total respect, without the insults nor romantic/sexual advances that were his usual pattern with pupils of the opposite sex.
His younger daughter worked as a secretary at the school, while his eldest, like him, would give theoretical and practical classes. I started with her. She told me I was driving too fast, and she used to place objects on the dashboard when approaching bends, to demonstrate (by the fall of the objects). I didn’t experience those classes as a drawback, but she said I was disregarding her teaching and referred me to her father.
His name was A. B. He was blond, with light-pinkish skin and a square jaw. He had appeared in my theory classes on occasion. Was very fond of expressing himself with sounds — for example, after mentioning an ambulance, he would make the ni-no, ni-no sound of a siren, nee-naw, nee-naw, wee-woo, wee-woo, in English.
During practical lessons, he was demanding, impatient and impulsive. He constantly told off the learners and any driver around, always starting by turning the — virtual — window crank, even though all the cars, including that red Rosso Proteo Alfa 146 JTD, had electric windows already.
I remember two anecdotes with me behind the wheel.
The first days, in town, I had a tendency to drive the car too far to the right (the passenger side, in Spain). He warned me a few times. Then he stopped talking. After a while, he broke the silence to utter, at a very moderate volume, listlessly, barely audible:
‘Pum.’
As I turned my head slightly to give him a WTF?! look, the passenger side mirror actually went pum with the mirror of a parked car (boom!).
The other anecdote happened during my first time merging onto a highway. It was a very standard, very correct, very textbook manoeuvre of me. However, he reacted with a tone of weariness and disappointment:
‘What kind of faint merging is this, man? You’re nineteen!’
I nodded in agreement, and from then on, he never had to correct me again, except — as his daughter had done at first — for the opposite reason. He would do so with a smile I couldn’t see, but I guessed from his voice and the Ah!… movement of his head — perceived through my peripheral vision.
At least in 1999, you had to pay fees that gave you the right to take three exams. You obtained your licence after passing a first, multiple-choice theoretical exam, and a second, practical exam. If you failed two exams (of any type), you had to pay the fees again to take more exams.
When I told my instructor — A. B.’s daughter — that I was taking the theory test, she warned me that I wasn’t quite ready. Despite this, I was able to pass it on the first try.
I don’t remember what my subsequent instructor, A. B., replied when I told him I was going to take the practical exam.
I failed. I did very well, but I fell into one of those traps they sometimes set for you when giving you instructions.
I had to take the third exam (my second practical exam). As soon as I left the exam centre, I hit the curb with my rear wheel as I made the first turn around a corner.
A. B. looked out the window. He began to talk about the football tournament his younger son was playing in.
It turned out the examiner’s son was in the same tournament, and they spent the test talking about their sons.
Meanwhile we reached the highway. As I pushed the gearshift back to shift into fourth gear, I shifted into second, and the car shot forward as I pressed the accelerator. (In the rearview mirror, the examiner was indifferent to the mishap, still chatting about the kids. Beside him, my instructor feigned similar calm, but his transformation into a sea monster had already reached an obvious and terrifying stage.)
At that moment, the examination results were the least of my worries. While I quickly shifted the gear from second to fourth, all I could think about was what that giant, blond, red-faced creature would do to me as soon as the examiner left us alone.
The examiner did not even ask me to park: we returned to the exam centre, where I stopped the car without making any manoeuvres. The verdict seemed clear.
Nevertheless, I not only survived the wrath of the crimson giant, but I passed the exam and got my licence.
(Aside from the surreal conversation about the kids and their football championship, I had heard that there was a passing quota that determined the severity of the examiners. This fits in with such a rigorous failure and such a lenient passing.)