The Driving Test

“I know you were very nervous, but you really need to watch the right turns,” she says, looking at me. At least, I think she is looking at me; I can’t see her eyes behind the mirrored sunglasses.



I never learned to drive until two weeks ago. In my native country, you need to be eighteen to take the driving test and since I was already in the US for college, I never took the test at eighteen. The summer of my twentieth birthday, my mom asked the driver to give me some lessons and made me work for the written test.



The written exam is very complicated in Turkey; you have to answer questions about traffic, engine and first aid. The driving exam, on the other had, is a joke. You get in their car, go straight, make a U-turn, pull over and you’ve passed. It’s not a huge surprise that Istanbul is full of bad drivers. Before the exam, the driver and I practiced a bit and I drove on my own around the block one time.



So, at twenty, I had a license. I went back to college in Pittsburgh and did not drive. I graduated and moved to New York City and continued not to drive. When we decided to move out of the state, seven years later, we bought a car and I promised Jake I’d drive as part of our all-summer cross-country trip.



And I did. I drove for twelve hours on my first day. The car was swerving a lot, but mostly under control. At the end of the day, my muscles were tight from stressing and my hands hurt from gripping the steering wheel. I drove several more times during the trip, in the farm roads of Texas and highways of Montana. All in all, I drove maybe for ten days.



California State allows a foreign licensed person to get a temporary license until she passes the driving test. I took the written exam with Jake and scheduled my test for two and a half weeks later. I told him that I would do the driving since I needed the exercise and I almost killed us on the ramp to the highway.


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