My first driving lesson was back in the Summer of Love, around the time Jimi Hendrix released his first album. My dad and I headed to an abandoned military airstrip where he pointed out the controls of our 1963 Mercury Comet, then put me in the drivers seat. I was 12.
Four years later, I passed my drivers test without a hitch. Then we moved to Europe. I was re-tested in Belgium by a government official who used a measuring tape to check my distance from the curb. I passed again.
Now it's 2010. After holding a licence for almost 40 years, I was about to find out whether I could still pass – Young Drivers of Canada had invited me back to driving school.
To prepare, they suggested a week in the classroom, but I didn't have the time. As an alternative, they offered an e-learning program. I took a look, but my eyes glazed over after five minutes.
I understood that I might have some bad habits, but figured they'd be little more than minor blemishes. Most experienced drivers are filled with conceit, and I was no exception. With a background that includes motorcycle racing, Formula One car school and more than a million kilometres behind the wheel, how could my driving skills be anything but excellent?
Now the day of the test had arrived. Instructor Jim Kilpatrick rolled up in a red Toyota Yaris with a Young Drivers of Canada sign on the roof. “Good luck,” Kilpatrick said.
I noticed that the car had an extra brake pedal on the passenger side. I asked Kilpatrick if he'd ever been forced to use it. “Yes,” he replied.
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I had brought along a pair of hats to mark the conclusion of my test. One was a graduate's tasselled mortarboard, carefully sized to my head. The other was a dunce cap fashioned from a sheet of white Bristol board with an L stencilled on the front. (I had originally planned to make it a D, but my teenage son didn't know what it meant. “L means Loser,” he said.)
Now I was heading into the freeway. Kilpatrick was in the passenger seat, watching me. I used an eggshell touch on the accelerator, hoping to impress him with my maturity and caution. My hands were placed perfectly on the wheel, at the nine and three o'clock positions, and I made a great show of scanning the mirrors. As behavioural displays went, this had to be my finest hour since the day I met my wife's parents for the first time.
“How am I doing?” I asked. Kilpatrick shrugged. I noticed that he was making a lot of marks on a clipboard. Now we were downtown, weaving through narrow streets. I made sure to make a complete stop at every corner, and looked twice each way before moving out.
Kilpatrick asked me to parallel park. I whipped the Yaris into the slot and turned to him with a look of triumph. But he was marking on the clipboard again.
I had gone into the test like Chuck Yeager approaching a flight in a Cessna. Now I was getting the sense that things might not be going so well. I knew it was against the rules, but I asked Kilpatrick for an interim evaluation.
“You were aimed left while you were waiting to turn,” he said. “And you turned the wheels when we were standing still.”
“It that all?” I asked.
“No,” he replied. “There's more.”
Kilpatrick had spent decades teaching teenagers and new Canadians – some of them had never even driven a car before. Could I be worse than them? Desperate, I suggested some bootlegger turns, where you spin the car by cutting on the wheel as you pull on the handbrake. This has always been one of my favourites driving moves, and would surely impress Kilpatrick. But he said no.
