I have now completed seven or so hours of my in-car driving lessons and I think I’m getting pretty good at it for someone with so little experience. I’m excited to finish my time so that I can practice with my family’s van in preparation for my G2 road-test. I’ve got a few pressing reasons to get my G2, the first and foremost would be to start getting lots of experience with driving sans having to risk someone else’s (my designated G + years experience supervisor) life. This would be to become the future secondary driver of my family since my mother doesn’t drive and my sister is still just a little kid.
There are obviously other reasons, such as convenience (I won’t need my dad to drive me for things like going down the street to a friend’s place for a couple hours) and sheer awesomeness. It would make going places (like school) much more convenient, even though I doubt I’ll be allowed to take the car to school and back. I don’t think I’d ever drive anyone else for another long time since I’d rather not risk anyone’s babies’ lives until I’m sure the risk is minimal/not inflated beyond normal proportions from a lack of experience on my part.
This Saturday will mark my last session (from 9:30 am to 4:30 pm) of insurance classes at the Ottawa Driving school. The teachers are easygoing (almost too much so) and the classes boring, so it’s not too bad but it’s not particularly fun either. A lot of questions are asked like rhetorical ones (when they really aren’t rhetorical at all) but the class is expected to answer them. That makes for slow learning and boring, awkward silences. I don’t mind so much but some people get very irritable by the end (I got told quite rudely to stop tapping something or other last time by a girl trying to sleep).
It’s funny how a lot of girls in my classes haven’t bothered to even start learning how to drive, mostly–I am only speculating here–in anticipation of boys such as myself who would willingly volunteer to drive them around to places for whatever sinister reasons we boys may harbor. It doesn’t really bug me since some girls, dare I say, can’t be blamed in expecting such luxuries… I’m sure this line of thinking hasn’t even crossed the minds of others, but it wouldn’t be completely unreasonable if you ask me… It gives boys another “good” (or maybe not so much…) reason to start learning to drive to better serve their female counterparts/masters in more useful capacities. I know I personally wouldn’t mind driving around friends, romantic or no, if I could be certain I was going to do so in a safe way.
That’s another thing, why are boys expected to do all these things for girls (even if, like myself, they do not protest) when it’d be almost humiliating for a boy to have to count on his female friends for rides? It seems a bit unfair but I suppose that’s all written into the wondrous user manual for life with two sexes. I’m not really complaining since I’d rather drive than be driven anyway, but merely making a bit of a social commentary. Then again, maybe the only reason I’d rather drive is that pre-programmed role of my sex I just mentioned (can you feel the circular, convectional flow?).
I’m regretting not taking grade twelve Physics a little but I figure I could learn the stuff on my own with my Physics 12 textbook (Nelson) lent so kindly (along with a whack load of other texts) to me by Perry So’s father. I suppose I’ll read over the stuff and try and familiarize myself with the concepts before I head off to university.