I hate hate HATE driving. It terrifies me.

Not only that, but I am TERRIBLE at it.

Seriously. I am the driver that you all love to loathe. The one who slams on my brakes when someone 100 kilometres ahead of me merely taps theirs.

Granted, I am not in the fast lane* when I do this, but still… from the way the faces of the drivers behind me, visible in my rear view mirror, twist and contort with rage, I reckon that my cautionary measures don’t go over very well.

See? I TOLD you it was bad.

Compared to me, the granny who nervously crawls along at about 20 kph in her sturdy, vintage car looks like the female version of Michael Schumacher.

Yes, I know. I am the one girl who is single-handedly responsible for giving female drivers the world over a bad name. (Actually, it isn’t single-handedly. It’s more like both white-knuckled hands gripping the wheel. One at two o’clock and one at ten o’clock.)

My affliction extends to everything with wheels: From bicycles (don’t think I ever progressed past the tricycle stage) to motorcycles.

Yes, of course I have stupidly tried riding a motorcycle. On my father’s insistence.

When I was ten years old, he still couldn’t accept that I, his fourth child after three daughters, turned out to BE YET ANOTHER GIRL. Even though he and my mom had changed the recipe by waiting four years instead of the usual two years between babies before having me. Therefore I harboured so much being-a-girl-instead-of-a-son-guilt that I swallowed my fear and agreed to try and ride a bike. With Wheels. And an ENGINE. By myself.

Granted, as far as motorcycles go, it was a real girlie bike, with an engine sounding no more threatening than an ailing mosquito, but still enough to trick the ears on my ten-year old self into believing that it was as powerful as a Ducati and therefore a potential coffin on two wheels.

Do I really need to tell you how that excursion went? Well, it didn’t last very long, thank goodness. And thank goodness that no living thing was in my path, but that there was a wall which came in very handy when I went faster and faster instead of stopping…

Luckily, the wall, the bike and I all survived with minimal external scars. But the emotional scarring was forever carved into my fragile soul…

Oddly enough, I am not a nervous passenger. I even love to ride on the back of a motorcycle and one of my biggest thrills ever was riding around the greater Washington D.C. metropolitan area on the back of a Harley Davidson.

So yes, all you lay (psycho)logists. Go ahead. But I know what you are itching to tell me: That I have Major Issues and am therefore unable to trust myself and that some of those very same Major Issues extend into Major Issues with my self-esteem. Which would be good news, actually, because that would imply that I at least HAVE self-esteem! Ha ha.

I think the reasons for my driving terror are actually far more boring and mundane: I am just a scaredy-cat. Plain and simple.

I am one of the only people I know who wasn’t eager to get my driver’s license. As my 18th birthday inched ever closer, I DREADED the thought.

So throughout college, I saw to it that all my boyfriends had cars. And I knew most city bus drivers in Pretoria by name.

Eventually, at the age of 20, the gong sounded ominously on my procrastination of the inevitable, marking the end of my ‘career’ as a happy, terminal passenger.

I had a job offer as a newspaper reporter. But one of the conditions of the job was that I had to have my driver’s license!

My father and I were both still too scarred by my near-fatal motorcycle driving experience, so external, professional help was recruited. One early autumn day in my 20th year, I was picked up by the Top Gears Driving School** instructor for my first lesson.

I’m sure the poor man had to undergo trauma counselling afterwards. He probably still is! It was a good thing that the Top Gears Driving School cars came equipped with brake, clutch and accelerator pedals on the passenger side as well!

But we got through it. Even though what was supposed to have been five lessons (“No, really, Mrs. Redsaid’s Mom. We assure you that all our students have the hang of it after only five lessons! In fact, we guarantee it!”) stretched into a costly fifteen.

(And I STILL can’t parallel park.)

Then the only other ordeal remained: Actually getting my license. Now, all my sisters – despite being eager to drive and possessing lead feet – failed their driver’s license tests the first time.

So I think my entire family (including myself) mentally prepared for the possibility of me becoming a regular at the testing grounds for the next few years or so.

Right around this time, my mom became increasingly nervous by the prospect of me taking too long to pass my driver’s test and then losing the newspaper job and spending the rest of my living days lazing around on the couch watching television under her roof. So she took necessary precautions.

She arranged for my driver’s test to take place at a testing ground far outside the city in a town where the female population was hovering just this side of extinction and where they probably had not seen a girl in real life in WEEKS.

Then, on the day of the test, she had me dress up, attempted to tame my hair into something remotely resembling a style and had my sister carefully apply my make-up. (“But not too much, in case it’s a female traffic cop.”)

To be continued on Monday... (Promise)

* Sure I've been in the fast lane! As a passenger.

** Not their real name. Are you kidding me? They'll probably receive death threats for allowing the likes of me to even go for my driver's license. They should have just given up on me after fifteen lessons, declaring me unfit to handle anything with wheels.

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