The first time I was sitting behind the steering wheel was in my mother’s 1980-something white Honda Civic, in which I got so nervous trying to get the car moving that when it moved too fast I’d mistaken the braking pedal with the the accelerator and ended up wrecking the Honda by hitting a tree in front of our neighbour’s house.

Since then, I didn’t dare to continue the lesson – until I started working full time and therefore had to travel to and from work by catching public transport, which pretty much meant having to endure all things that came with it:

1. The humidity since there was no air-con and the car was always packed with lots of people
2. The random guy who sat next to me and opted to spread his legs selfishly while others had to close theirs together because there wasn’t a space left to move for even an inch
3. Being sexually harassed by the guy sitting next to me who’d try to take the opportunity to pin me down by accident whenever the car made a sharp turn
4. Having to catch the running car every Monday morning because for some twisted unexplainable reason it was always the day where the numbers of cars were running short and yet there were more people wanting to go on them.

Eventually I had enough of it all, and I made a decision to start learning how to drive again and this time I wouldn’t make the same mistake of enrolling myself to a private driving lesson class. I’d been there before and I learnt jack shite out of it. I paid Rp. 600,000.- for 12 sessions and the whole time the teacher was only teaching me how to shift gears and how to brake – pretty much all the crap I could’ve learnt by myself. I even had to ask him to teach me how to park backward and he only gave it to me at the last session, at my house. To make things even worse, the first time I had the lesson, before he dropped me home and everything, he told me that it was customary for me to give him tipping money.

Can you believe that? He actually asked for a tip. And he wanted it for every session. He even mentioned the amount. He sez, “Five thousand rupiah is enough. That’s how much people usually give me.”

I ended up having to shed a grand total of Rp. 660,000.- for stupid driving sessions and the only things that I’d learnt out of it was that there were 5 gears, and that the pedal on the left was the clutch, the one in the middle was the brake and the one on the right was the accelerator.

How about making the car stop without having to step on the brake whilst you’re in the middle of an ascended road? How about finding the biting point while shifting gears and having to grab something out of the window – like the freeway or parking ticket, for example? And how about parallel parking? And those are only a few of things that one should know when driving a manual car.

Before I started on my own driving lesson, already my mother regaled me by saying things like “driving is a lot of work, you know. You get really tired after you drive because you have to pay extra attention to a lot of things simutaneously – if you think it’s all fun and easy once you know how to drive, you’re wrong”, or “the worst thing that could happen when you’re going through an ascended road is when your car engine stops all of a sudden because you forget to shift to a lower gear and then the car slides backward and crashes the car that’s lining behind you.”

Already my head was filled with the nightmares that hadn’t even happened – yet. However, I was adamant to learn again. I mean, come on, I was 25 years old. It was embarassing not knowing how to drive being that old and all, even more so when I saw eighteen years old chicks cruising in their Honda Jazz and all, while I was still relying on others for transportation.

So I used my dad’s Toyota Avanza (“It’s a company car so don’t worry about scratching” sez Dad) every evening after work and drove it around the neighborhood whilst getting used to the feeling of being in a car and generally tried not to let my nerves took over my sanity, because every time I got on the car and started driving I’d sweat like crazy and the imprints of my fingers would leave marks on the steering wheel because I’d gripped it so tightly as if it had a mind of its own.

But taking personal driving lessons at night time had its advantage – I got used to driving in the dark that when I did it in the brightness of the daylight, it was easy-peasy for me to do so.

However, my mother was right – driving is tiring. When I used to be a workaholic and finished the day at around 7 – 8 pm, the tiredness would get me when I was driving home and I had to struggle really hard to keep my eyes open, and then I’d wistfully thought about the times I used to doze off to sleep when catching public transport.

By having to drive to work, I actually had to get up earlier (which I loathe) and I had to face all the stress that drivers get when encountering other obnoxious drivers who selfishly take over your path without indicating, or when being caught in a hellish traffic jam and ended up hurting my left knee from having to pedal the clutch slowly because I had to keep shifting from first to second gear and back and forth.

But being able to drive had a lot of its advantage too – when my dad was sick and had to be taken to the emergency room, I was glad that I didn’t have to wait for a taxi because I could drive him myself to the hospital. Or when my beau and I decided to visit my future in-laws in Semarang, he and I took turns in driving so that each of us could rest whilst the other was driving.

Sometimes I gloat over the fact that I could drive a manual car – some girls drove automatic – and dare I might say, I am even a better driver than my beau (he totally disagress due to his large incapacitating ego), because I could park backward to a sloping path without having to turn my head around (unlike him) and rely fully on the side-view mirror.

However, people often told me that I hadn’t really qualified to drive unless I’d been involved in a car accident. Perhaps this was true – I’d been in two, and I was a changed driver afterwards. Before the accident I thought nothing bad could happen to me even if I drove up to 120 km/hour, but now I’m a firm believer of never-go-above-80-unless-the road-is-empty.

People can get so caught up the stress of driving and the competition to go faster, but it’s not worth it. I’d learnt that in my final lesson.

Ok, here’s why; On my way to the bank yesterday afternoon, I was driving and I missed the turn which led me to the building so I had to do a U-turn because the bank was on the opposite of the road.

So I indicated the right-signal slowly…carefully …and yes, it was legal to do a U-turn.

And out of nowhere this stupid fucking motorbike crashed right into the right side of my car and I am pleased to say the passenger on it both fell down hard to the ground. I wound my window open and yelled, “Kan saya udah pasang sen ke kanan!!! Gimana seh?!?!?!” (Yeah, not the best line but however)

They got up quickly and scuttled off, leaving me shaking and about to explode with rage. My heart was pounding so quickly and I swore and hoped to God they both crashed and died or something because I was really, very pissed off. I wouldn’t even think about how much damage they would have caused to the car because already I was distressed and my nerves were shot to shit.

My heart sunk even further knowing that I hadn’t paint-guard it and I am still paying it’s installments, thank you very much you fucking sons of bitches!!!!! Look what you did to my car you stupid fucking piece of shit!!!! It’s not like I got it for free or something! FUCK!

So anyway, as soon as I got to the bank I stepped out of the car to check the damage. Yeah. Not good. There was this long indentation on the right side, about fifty inches long, and there was even a deeper one at the bottom right corner of the driver’s door, so bad the paint was actually scraped off, and the bit where it covered the wheel was also dented so deep and bent outside, and as I was touching it to check the paint and all, the sharp pieces bled my finger. Shit. Then I realized that the little light on the side was also gone. Double shit.

At that stage, I was ready to kill someone. I called my beau to have a good rant and then on my way home, I almost hit another fucking motorbike because this dude, for some fucked-up reason decided to ignored the red light and went ahead to cross the junction. I couldn’t believe these people.

What is up with these motorbike riders?!?!! Why oh why did they choose to cut to the opposite of the road or keep going straight when people were actually indicating to turn? Where they blind?

Seriously. I know my beau also rides one but he was never that nasty! There were rules, for fuck’s sake. Honestly, I wished all those idiots died or something, because they did not deserve to live.

I was all shaky and angry and pissed off and upset that as soon as beau got home he gave me a hug and told me it didn’t matter what happened as long as I was alright.

We both sat in front of the television watching some gruesome gangsta-type movie with Queen Latifah in it and I was engrossed with it for a while but when it was over I got into the depressed-mode all over again.

So beau said, “What can I do to make you feel better?”
I went quiet for a while. Then I piped out, “Let’s go get some chocolates.”

I gotta take care the car and go visit the guys at the insurance company today.

Fuck.

It was our first car accident, whereas my boyfriend had had his motorbike accidents for four times, hence the scars on various parts of his body. Luckily we were not injured but escaped with a few shocks on our nerves systems – our necks and heads throbbing and hurting every time we try to move them.

I’ve been agonizing over it since then, wondering and thinking and doubting and self-convicting myself. Even blaming myself, at some stage, whenever I thought about it, which was bad, I know but couldn’t help myself not to.

We were on the fastest lane on the freeway that evening. The guy in front of me was driving the Suzuki APV in a jerky sort of way – speeding up and slowing down and it was at a point when he just stopped all of a sudden and I couldn’t brake fast enough. Everything happened so quickly and yet every hits and every bouts of it was happening so slowly, and if you’ve ever seen The Matrix and the bit when Neo was avoiding the bullets then you’d know what I mean.

I knew I was going to hit him. I knew there was no way avoiding it.

What I didn’t know was that it wasn’t over yet, and that I was about to be crashed into from behind for exactly three times in an exactly the same interval and the thud was so hard and loud and bloody painful, during the time it was happening all I could think of was I was in total deep shit – the deepest I’d been in. The crash from behind pushed us to hit the APV again, and this happened twice, until the car finally got to a halt.

When it all stopped, I held my boyfriend’s hand, asking if he was alright, and he asked the same thing, both completely stunned and shocked, like it was all a bad dream.

But it wasn’t. We were still there.

When I got out of the car, I saw four cars behind me were not equally as damaged as mine but much worse. Miles worse. Mine was minor, if comparison was required.

The middle-aged Chinese guy who hit us with the Lancer was already out and he was just standing there, arms akimbo, examining the damage from his car, shock and astoundment all over his face – pretty much like me. I saw a lady with a baby in her arms about fifteen meters away. Another bald Chinese dude in work outfit clutching a mobile onto his right ear, examining the others who hit and got hit. I caught a glimpse of an Avanza and its front totally crimpled over.

My boyfriend arguing and yelling every single explicit words he knew to the guy in front of us.

Soon the towing car arrived. We were holding out traffic and jamming out the freeway. It was all a blur for me anyway. I still couldn’t believe it happened. To this very day I questioned it. The how’s and why’s and yet still not knowing the answer.

When the freeway officer told us to drive aside, the APV just drove off. At first I thought I was going to pull over and try to sort it out but at that stage it was no longer anybody’s fault. So I continued driving home.

I remembered calling my mum previously and she was frantically worried and the reception was so bad she thought the car was wrecked to pieces and I was bleeding all over the place.

When we got home, we just sat on the couch, hugging each other, holding hands, feeling like we wanted to cry but too distressed to do so. I called my mum and told her I was home and she said she’d be on her way immediately.

When she turned up she didn’t get in the house. I wondered what was taking her so long and I realized she must be inspecting the damage. When I opened the door she saw me and right away she hugged me and told me not to worry and that she was glad she didn’t lose me. We were both bawling our eyes out and I was so relieved she wasn’t at all pissed off with me.

My boyfriend stayed the night. Despite what happened we were thankful. Incredibly thankful. It could have been worse. We were left unscathed, and everything could be put back to normal, though money would be in much need for repairements.

He said to me that perhaps God wanted to test us, to see what we would do if dreadful things happen upon us – whether we’d curse or give thanks, for whatever was given would also be taken back. I knew it was right and even while it was happening I knew it was so. I was so relieved that we were okay. I was even more worried to those who were behind me, and felt guilty because I kept thinking that maybe I could have done something to prevent it all.

While I was busy speculating about – my head practically making whirring noise from all the thinking and wondering, my boyfriend retorts good-naturedly, “I think you better stay on the eighty from now on, hun.”

And I thought – Shite. I’m a twenty-five year old female driver going on sixty.

*) Actual event happened on the 6th of March 2007.