Driving Instructor Day

 

Driving Instructor Day: Why You Should Never Let a Gremlin Drive

First things first — everyone is absolutely fine.

Slightly battered. Mildly crispy around the edges from an airbag that had opinions. Sporting a fractured wrist and a backache that kept me company for longer than I'd have liked. But fine. Upright. Indignant.

Very, very indignant.

Because here's the thing about the incident that shall henceforth be known as The Lamp Post Affair:

I did everything right.

He pulled out. There was no gap, no hard shoulder, nowhere to go. I hit the brakes. I steered. I made every decision available to me in the seconds I had, and I navigated the consequences as best I could — which ended up being off the road, onto the grass, and into a lamp post that never saw me coming and did not survive the introduction.  Nor did the car I'd owned for not quite 3 whole weeks.

I walked away with a lightly fractured wrist, a back that had strong feelings about the whole situation, and first degree burns from an airbag that deployed directly onto my arms like it was personally offended.

He drove away.

Didn't stop. Didn't check. Just kept going, presumably with his gremlins still at the wheel, blissfully unaware or magnificently unbothered that his choices had just caused a series of events that had written off my car and introduced me rather forcefully to an airbag on an otherwise unremarkable road.

I also, for the record, had to pay for the lamp post.  And declare it as an own fault situation. 

So. Driving Instructor Day.

I did not plan to mark it quite this literally.

But since we're here — since I am literally someone who somewhere along the way had to survive another person's terrible driving and then pay the invoice the universe issued for the structural damage — it seems like a reasonable moment to talk about the gremlins behind the wheel.

Not mine this time. His.

The ones that said It'll be grand, sure at a junction where grand was absolutely not on the table. The ones running I haven't got time for this or they'll move or the absolute classic it'll be fine.

It was not fine.

And when it wasn't fine, his gremlins apparently also said not my problem and put their foot down.

Here's what I've learned, for whatever it's worth from someone who is not a driving instructor and is also not a life coach and is frankly barely holding it together on a good day:

Head gremlins are catastrophically bad drivers. Yours, mine, the stranger at the junction. They panic. They miscalculate. They grab the wheel at the worst possible moment and they are absolutely convinced they're helping.

But there are two kinds of gremlin at the wheel. 

The ones that freeze, overcorrect, catastrophise — and put you in your own ditch. Those are exhausting and we all have them and that's a whole other post.

And then there are the ones that cause the crash and keep driving. The ones that don't look back. That leave other people to deal with the wreckage, pay for the lamp post, and figure out how to get home.

Those ones are something else entirely.

I don't have a tidy resolution. I'm not going to give you three steps to quieter inner critics because I am absolutely not qualified and also I still have opinions about that junction that aren't entirely printable.

What I've got is this:

Check who's driving.

In your own head, yes. Always worth knowing which gremlin has got hold of the wheel and whether you'd actually like them there.

But also around you. Because sometimes the thing that derails your day isn't caused by your gremlin at all. Sometimes it belongs to someone else entirely. Someone who pulled out without looking and then didn't even stay to find out what happened next.

Sometimes all you can do is brake, steer, manage what's in front of you, and deal with the aftermath.

Even when the aftermath includes a lamp post invoice.

The lamp post, for what it's worth, has been replaced.

I paid for it.