Previously: Driving Lessons
Sometime around the year 2000, my father's driver slowly inched the Toyota FX into the narrow driveway in our cramped compound. It was past 1 in the morning and as I waited for my dad to go to the master's bedroom to retire, me and Darwin, a college friend, would make hasty preparations to sneak out and test drive the car into the near-empty streets of Sampaloc. The driver bestowed his reluctant approval.
Those days, all I wanted was to drive the car to Kelly Heights in Antipolo to watch the city lights blink on the horizon. It was my ultimate senti trip - a long-forgotten tradition of pouring your heart out to another person and unburden yourself before the eventual hardening of emotions come daybreak. But because I was too lazy to get a driver's license, I was reduced to sneaking the car during early mornings, hoping I won't get into trouble.
But luck ran out one evening.
I was backing the Isuzu Gemini - a car that was given to me by my dad, which I passively declined because of its obsolescence (I was hoping he would gift me a Toyota Corolla '98 instead) - out of the driveway not knowing I was already backing against a neighbor's car that was parked across the street. I did get a mouthful from my mother that day. Not only was I driving without a license, but also it cost my dad 4K to have the damaged car fixed.
My confidence behind the wheel crumbled after that accident. And when you get reminded of that first driving school experience, which you hated so much, might as well abandon learning to drive at all. So in the years after, aside from the occasional refresher courses I took from time to time, I was never really comfortable stepping on the gas, shifting gears, and finding my way into Metro Manila's snarling traffic.
I was backing the Isuzu Gemini - a car that was given to me by my dad, which I passively declined because of its obsolescence (I was hoping he would gift me a Toyota Corolla '98 instead) - out of the driveway not knowing I was already backing against a neighbor's car that was parked across the street. I did get a mouthful from my mother that day. Not only was I driving without a license, but also it cost my dad 4K to have the damaged car fixed.
My confidence behind the wheel crumbled after that accident. And when you get reminded of that first driving school experience, which you hated so much, might as well abandon learning to drive at all. So in the years after, aside from the occasional refresher courses I took from time to time, I was never really comfortable stepping on the gas, shifting gears, and finding my way into Metro Manila's snarling traffic.
That was until my mother's driver decided to work abroad in 2013.
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