Driver's Ed

I'm not B.S.ing you. This guy was standing here like he owned the place. 

When I was in Driver’s Ed, there was a simulator module where we sat in a room in metal cars that looked like that were stripped from a carnival ride a few decades prior to my birth. We collectively watched a screen that looked as though we were the driver of the car and there were obstacles entering the road that were to be avoided. Each of our little carnival cars were tracking how accurate each of our respective reaction times were as bikers, soccer balls, children and other drivers jutted out unexpectedly into the road in front of our “car”.

This was, perhaps, the elementary school version of preparing me for what driving here is actually like. If you think someone is going to do something, it’s likely they will do the opposite. If you can’t imagine some one doing something because, well, it would be life-threatening for them, they’re probably about to do it.

This is true of the dogs, the bulls, the horses, the young, and the other drivers that’s we’ve seen in the road. Everything here must have nine lives.

Yesterday, Trace and I had the privledge of watching one of the school buses from his school amble down the hairpin twists of the jungle road that leads from town to his school. The bus was going very slow, navigating with a significant tilt around some of the curves and had a 2” margin on it’s tail before it would have bottomed out on the hill behind it. If I hadn’t seen it for myself, I wouldn’t have believed it was possible. And to think, we’ve only seen it slide off the road once since school started 2 weeks ago!

I’ve learned that I drive like an American. I tend to stop at the stop signs, not well beyond them. When I pass bikers or pedestrians on the road, I give them a wide girth for safety, which turns out to be less safe because it seems to confuse everyone. I drive the speed limit and don’t like to pass on the solid yellows lines. I’m a regular old driving misfit. And, at the same time, it’s really fun to drive here. It’s kind of like being in a video game and paying super close attention to avoid slipping on the banana peel. I think I like it!