THE driving nightmare goes like this: "I am staying with a close friend who is imminently about to give birth (she, in fact, gave birth eight years ago). Her waters break and there is no one in the house to drive her to the hospital, except me, that is, and I can't drive.
No really, I insist in the dream, I can't. But with the overwhelming logic of dreams I end up sitting behind the wheel, and, miraculously, am able to start the car first time (a miracle, indeed, given my propensity in real life to stall). It is a dark and stormy night. There are three children in the back seat (dream extras from central casting; I've never been able to identify them). Everything goes fine until I have to turn right.
Then all my new found courage deserts me. I realise the enormity of my incapacity. I can't do this, I tell my friend who is now in the early stages of childbirth. I can't . . . it is at this stage I wake up.
It would be simplistic to say I decided to learn to drive because of a recurring nightmare. Any Freudian analyst worth her salt would be able to tell you that such a dream is not about driving per se, hut some deep seated (or perhaps passenger seated) anxiety about life itself. The car is your life, you sit behind the wheel, you think you're in control and then ... hey, a right turn comes up. Alternatively, given that the dream car is packed to the gills with mother, children and a baby on the way, is it the biological clock ticking loudly in my subconscious?
Well, whatever. Three months ago, after several false starts, I bought a car. It was the only way, I figured, after almost 20 years of adult life without transport, to force myself to learn. There it sat outside the door like some monumental folly. Meanwhile, I chugged around in the driving school model with the reassuringly large sign on the top flagging my idiocy and best of all, those wonderful dual controls. If only all cars could be like that, complete with a steady co pilot to grab the handbrake and tell you when to change gears.
(I simply hated those people who said to me: "Oh you know when to gear up from the sound of the engine". I mean, please! I have to do all these things with my hands and feet, watch in the mirrors and listen to the engine as well?)
Driving and typing, I reckon, are compulsory skills; everyone should have them. The biggest disadvantage of learning to drive late is that you are seriously afraid. You know the damage cars can do, you know how closely you skirt mortality every time you head out on to the thoroughfare. At 20 you think you're invincible. At 40 every hill start is a brush with death.
And, of course, there is the built in humiliation factor of trusting yourself to the tender mercies of the highway and the derision of other motorists. The endless stalling, the kangaroojumps, the mastery of the dashboard which you only achieve in the heartstopping grip of an emergency. I never knew where the wipers were until I was caught in an almighty downpour one afternoon which was so bad I couldn't see enough to pull in and discover which of the damn levers to use (I did, in the process, discover where the lights were, however).
It was the eeriest experience, driving along as if in some underwater tank, with sheets of rain streaming down the windscreen and seeing absolutely nothing - like the carwash but moving, and without the brushes.
The lights continue to fox me Even now when switching to full beam I seem to take a detour through the indicators so that for a brief moment the car is like a Christmas tree. Definitely a case of mixed signals. Who designed these things?
But back to the beginning. There it sat, neatly parked at the kerb. My car, for God's sake. It was supposed to make me feel like an adult, all growed up, mistress of my own destiny. Instead, I hated it. I dreaded having to get into it, let alone make it go. In the early stages the notion of an impulse trip was unthinkable. For a start, I wouldn't do right turns (hangover from the driving nightmare) which limited my journey options severely.
Secondly, I had to plan the route in advance to rule out (a) hill starts (b) roundabouts (c) parking within 200 metres of another vehicle. What elaborate diversions I created for myself! I once drove from the city centre to Blackrock to get to Donnybrook - an acute case of right turn denial.
I liked reversing, for some odd reason. I was better at it than going forward; how much easier everything would be if I could only go backwards permanently. (A rather alarming proposition if one persists with the dream allegory that the car is one's life).
SOME of these foibles do pass, though the hill start still puts the fear of God into me and the notion of holding the car on an incline with the clutch seems to me as preposterous as having to believe when I was learning to swim that the water would hold me up without my feet on the bottom. Everyone else, but not me!
What remains are other deficits. Once I had removed the taboos on right turns and roundabouts there were new navigational skills to learn. As a front seat passenger of long standing, I am amazed to discover how little notice I have taken of where I've been going. Hence on a recent trip to Galway I ended up sailing past Rathcoole, busily pointing out the Michelle Smith banners to my overseas visitor, before it struck me that I shouldn't be there. I should be in Kinnegad or some point west of it.
It was too much of a defeat to do a U turn and go back, so I persisted in travelling halfway to Cork before heading off cross country. The whole trip took about seven hours. Talk about nightmares! In the last few months it seems to me that I've swapped nocturnal terror for a daily diet of fear and loathing. Give me back the night sweats, I say.
The driving dream has disappeared, but no doubt, the evil subconscious will replace it with a new production. Don't be surprised if a pilot's licence is next on the agenda.
