Today I had my first driving test. Waiting until I was 24 years old seemed like a good plan. Nerves would not fail me now. I would be brilliant, I would be beautiful. They wouldn’t be able to help but pass me. I knew I could drive, they knew I could drive. The day, beautiful. Cold but sunshine raining down like the heavens knew that this would be my day. When I could trade in my tattered provisional license for a pretty pink one. I’ve been told that pink brings out my eyes. Like I’d wear it as an accessory or something.
As it turns out, something was plotting against me. Something or someone. On the approach to a roundabout, a roundabout that I had driven around hundreds of times before no less, something went wrong. Instead of putting the car into first gear to pull off when there was a gap, my brain malfunctioned. It had decided that today was the first day in over six months that I would put the car into third gear. I’m not sure why my mind thought that this would be a great idea, but it did. I tried to correct my mistake, but it was decided that I would put it in third for the second time and casually roll onto the roundabout as if that was what I was planning. Major, one.
Trundling along after this mishap I decided, why settle for just one major on this test? Upon resting at a set of traffic lights at a junction leading onto a roundabout my mind went into overdrive. As soon as the light went green I shot out from where I had been waiting, with a shaky leg, straight in front of a police van. Which, as it turns out isn’t actually something that you are meant to do. It might even be construed as something that is definitely against the rules. Just cutting up any old van wouldn’t be enough, it had to be a police van. Major, two.
My friend, my dear dear friend, you may be thinking, surely that is enough for one test! Oh how little you know dear friend, how very very little. The solar system was not correctly aligned for such nonsense. The only way out of this dire situation was to make one final mistake. The nail in the already shut coffin which had already been buried. Just one last insult to an already shaken self confidence. It was time for the manoeuvre part of the test. I had been diligently working on these. There was nothing that they could ask of me that I wasn’t fully prepared for and could do in my sleep. Until they asked me to reverse around a sweeping curve. And I thought that it was a sharp curve. And forgot absolutely everything that I’d been taught. And decided the best way to attack a sweeping reverse curve was to full lock the steering wheel and reverse straight into the kerb. With an enthusiasm rarely seen in such a manoeuvre. Major, three.
It was all plain sailing from there on out. Just a nice casual drive back to the test centre to lick my wounds. And be told that on top of the three majors I had also picked up nine minors. Which just goes to show, if you’re going to do something wrong, you may as well go all the way and really tit it all up. There’s always next time.