Progress

[alphacygni]

I just put gas in a car for the very first time, ever. I am irrationally proud.

This weekend has been step 1 in my quest to re-learn to drive, after an 11 year hiatus, since our local bus service stops during the summer months. I rented a car on Saturday morning, and did some driving around town both today and yesterday. Altogether, about 100 miles, including one highway on-ramp (the scariest thing of all, as far as I'm concerned).

It has been entirely not awful. It's still not easy, and I still was scared spitless on the highway on-ramp, but I made it.

Step 2, sometime in the next few weeks: Buy a car. Get insurance. Ye gods. I can't believe I'm doing this. I'm not sure if I'm more afraid of never getting any better, and being terrified of driving forever, or actually getting used to it, and becoming One Of Them. Being a non-driver has been such a big part of my life for so long now.

Comments

[signsoflife.livejournal.com]

I avoided gassing up cars long after I finally learned to drive.

[alphacygni]

In fact, my mom just informed me on the phone that she didn't put gas in a car until she was in her 50's. This is partly because there was always full service for much of her life. And once there wasn't anymore, she avoided doing it until her work commute made it absolutely necessary.

But we've got the credit card swipes at the pump now, and that's ever so much easier to deal with than wandering into a strange store and saying, "Uh, hi?"

[betweenstations.livejournal.com]

Some of the most surreal conversations I've had in my life were with gas clerks.

[fyfer.livejournal.com]

Getting gas used to feel so intimidating. I'm trying to identify things I'm irrationally intimidated by and get good at them. (Recent successes: investing, car purchasing.)

I had similar, though probably less powerful, mixed feelings about getting a car this week. I was proud of not having one, but it was getting inconvenient.

[fyfer.livejournal.com]

I just remembered that the first time I had to get gas in a car, I went to a full-service station with the excuse (to myself) that my RSI justified it. (It was bad enough that driving was sort of difficult, so the gas nozzle would have been hard too, but I knew it was just an excuse to get out of doing something that scared me.)

[maren.livejournal.com]

you mean you never had to put gas in the car when you were using it in high school? bah!

anyway, i was scared for a long time too, you know but if you just drive a lot you stop being scared. but its because you become good enough at it to be in control.

you wont be one of THEM unless you want to be. i doubt that will happen.

[mhaille.livejournal.com]

It was a good 2 years between the state saying I was competent to drive a car and actually *feeling* competent to handle a car. And that's relative to Out Here, with relatively little traffic.
Gassing up, though, was not a scary thing since my dad used to let me do it all the time when I was a kid, even back in the days before the vaporlock and automatic shutoff.

[alphacygni]

The really hilarious thing, of course, is that not only does the state consider me competent, but they consider me a Step 9 driver. Six years of incident-free driving are very easy when they involve no driving whatsoever.

I hope not to disappoint their mistaken assumption, though.