Being a Child Prodigy at Driving is a Bitter Curse

/ bensbitterblog

 

Me at a young age, except I was a boy and that was a real car.

Me at a young age, except I was a boy and that was a real car.

I don’t mean to brag (yeah I do) but, I am an awesome driver.  Not Nascar/stunt driver type, but the kind that is able to navigate traffic like a freaking boss.  (Just so you know, bosses like to yell at their inferiors.) I’m such a good driver, in fact that I can do multiple things while driving.  Let’s just say that if you were to see some of the things I did while driving, you would probably want to skewer me on a barbecue.  And pull over and wait for an hour.  I would tell you, but I think at least one cop follows my blog. I have the instincts of a guy that wakes up from a dream just before dying.  I might swerve and brake fast, but I won’t get in an accident.  It just won’t happen.

Everyone else compared to me.

Everyone else compared to me.

Don’t be a hater though(you can be a bitterer though), it’s just that I started driving young. I grew up on the mean streets of South Dakota where the legal driving age was 14 and in order to practice for the test, I started when I was 3. Contrary to popular belief, it wasn’t because the farmers needed to have their 14 year old kids driving the tractor to maintain the farms, but for the pure reason of allowing a kid prodigy to get his license(me in case you were wondering).  You know how when your super smart kid is bored in school because his or her brain is so far above the level of other kids in class, that he or she starts trying new things? No? Well, I can’t help you there.  But I was that kid driving prodigy.  I would get so bored driving an automatic car, that I would stick my legs outside the car (it was mostly because they were so white and it only got above 45 for about three months of the year there).  I decided that I needed to drive stick (or manual or whatever you like to call it) because automatic wasn’t cutting it.  I mastered that so fast that I asked my dad what the third kind of way to drive cars was.  He said there was none.  I was disappointed, so I learned how to drift long before it was a thing.  Not the kind in The Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift, but the kind where I let go of the wheel and my cars alignment took over.  Even then, when I tempted fate, no accident.

The thing that makes me an even better driver is that I haven’t driven the world’s finest machine’s like a Lamborghini, or a Ferrari, or even a Ford Focus.  I’ve pretty much driven the dirty laundry at the bottom of the hamper.  My cars in no particular order, Volkswagen Beetle, Volkswagen Beetle, Volkswagen Beetle, and a Volkswagen Beetle. Then there were three C’s of the 80’s, the Chevelle, the Chevette, the Citation (ironically the car I got my first citation in).  I managed to drive these terrible cars in snow, ice, rain, black ice, black snow, black rain, and even somehow managed to drive them on a dry surface on a sunny day, even with the sun all in my face.

Everyone else in the ditch, me calmly getting to work on time.

Everyone else in the ditch, me calmly getting to work on time.

 

In all those years, in all the stunt driving I did, no matter how much I tried, I’ve never been in an accident that was my fault.  There was the one time where I managed to drive over a median, hit a sign, and avoid another car, all while going 55 around a curve.  There was the other time where I managed to get so close to an accident that I took my driver’s side mirror out, but left the rest of the car intact.  There were the times when in my Dodge Caliber, in a snowpacalypse that rivaled Boston’s this year, I drove up steep hills to make it to work, while Hummers, SUV’s, and 4 wheel drive trucks were taking the day off to have a ditch convention on the side of the road. Problem being, they got to go to a convention, and I got to go to work.

This car pile up

50 car pile up.  Not pictured: Me, cause I drove right through it.

 

If you were to promise me a sports car, if I got in an accident in my Dodge Caliber before it was time to retire it and trade it in for my next clunker, I would do everything in my power to crash that thing (text while Ipoding, changing clothes while putting headphones on and driving through questionable yellow lights) and I still wouldn’t be able to get into one.  Be bitter all you want, but I am a child prodigy.  There could be a 50 car pile up in the road and I could be right in the middle of it, but I would manage to drive right through like a stunt driver.  But look way less cool doing it.

Being this talented is a bitter curse.  I get to work on day’s that no one else gets in and no sports car for me.

AAAAARRRRGGGHHHH

Bitter Driver Ben

 

 

76 thoughts on “Being a Child Prodigy at Driving is a Bitter Curse”

  3. Haha you do not understand how nervous this made me just reading it! I’m glad you’ve never been seriously injured in an accident!

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    • I have had quite a few close calls. That one that was going around the corner almost stopped my heart. There were medians on both sides and a car right smack dab in our lane with nowhere to go, so if I didn’t go over the median and smack the sign, I would have Tboned him. No damage even happened to my car. It was crazy.

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  4. So, on the path toward my workplace is this little disaster of a traffic circle. It’s more of a traffic kidney bean, actually, with traffic coming from two major surface roads and from right off the Interstate, with a cross road that’s just a moderately busy city street, and a couple of cross-cuts where you can do a U-turn or just go across the center of the kidney bean to get somewhere slightly different. All it’s missing is a sign, “HOST YOUR TRAFFIC ACCIDENT HERE”. And on one corner/curve of this traffic kidney bean is, I swear, an auto parts store. So someone knows how to locate their business correctly.

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  6. I learned to drive a stick in my ancient Baja bug. The darn thing had no reverse and I had to stand in the driver’s doorway guiding it with the steering wheel while I pushed it backward out of parking spaces. Thank goodness it was Baja’d out – it was quite lightweight and easily moved. But imagine seeing a woman quite pregnant pushing her car out of a parking space! That would be me. 😀

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  7. A pro in the driving compartment, eh? Perhaps you could teach me how to NOT hit cars as I try to reverse out of a car parking space? Eeeek! I admit it, I’m a terrible driver and an even more terrible PARKER!

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    • Not really an expert, just been doing it for a long time and never been in an accident that was my fault. But I do know how to drive a manual and that is something a lot of people can’t do. Parking is just a pain in the butt. Too little space and too many people pulling out all the time.

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  8. I don’t know why, but I feel like I could watch that second moving picture all day.
    Also, totally random but I saw where you said something about one of your followers maybe being a cop or something. Husband is talking about that. Had a big-up here say something about how his forearm tattoos could be overlooked (long sleeves). Kind of ridiculous that cops can’t have tattoos on their arms, but hey, whatevs. Anyway, just throwing that out there.

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    • So he’s thinking about being a cop? That sounds awesome. And you don’t have to do it in KY. I bet there are a lot of places that don’t mind that. I don’t actually know if I have a cop follower but I assume there is at least one. Just guessin.

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    • I don’t know how it is in Tacoma, but around here it’s been construction and lots of accidents too. We went to the Tulip thing a couple of weeks ago and on a Sunday, there was a jam in Everett. Why?

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      • Some girl died after she drove off of an overpass and her car landed below onto I-5…15 Mike back up on a Friday. Ugh. And in Bonney Lake a family died when the construction barrier fell on their truck. Ugh. So sad.

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  10. I hope you are knocking on wood, throwing salt over your shoulder, rubbing a faux rabbit foot, etc. It appears as though you just challenged fate to a smack down. I wonder what the over/under is on that fight… 😜

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  11. Oh my, I am such a terrible driver. It’s embarrassing. But it could also be because I need glasses…so there’s that. One time I tried to take my sweater off while driving on the highway, but only managed to get it halfway off. I drove for like 20 minutes with my sweater trapped behind my neck and still on my arms until I finally gave in and pulled over haha. I’m a stunt driver too!

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  13. I’m the exact opposite. Whoever passed me on my driving test is either insane or my dad paid him. after having my license for 3 years I remember getting on the freeway one day. I looked over my shoulder and having this epiphany about the blind spot. It finally clicked. Prior to that I just looked over my shoulder as some kind of getting on the freeway dance move. I had no idea what I was looking for! Lol

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    • I’m thinking my daughter will not inherit my skills, so it will be interesting how I teach her. While my son won’t be as prodigious as me, he is learning at a young age what the pedals and gears and etc. are for. He may make a Gardner driving master someday.
      I love that you figured out the blind spot thing later in life. I anticipate the actions of people like you 4 steps in advance, so I’m good.

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  15. Ben, your true test would be driving in Indian conditions – our roads, our indiscipline, our hetergenous wheeled (mechanised and un-) vehicles! Try it one day, and your bitterness at being a prodigy would be relaced by real pride, I promise you! 🙂
    And as usual, a good, easy read!

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