Crisis

I had a crisis this week and now I feel better thanks to my friends and family. Of course I have closely scrutinised the minutiae of my own reaction, worried away at it like a terrier with a....something a terrier would have at, until I arrived at some kind of explanation.
After 30 years of driving, I failed a driving test. And I felt like a train wreck afterwards.

I will freely admit that I felt very resentful about having to take a test. Had I been German, or Austrian, I wouldn't have had to. No, I have no idea why, the French, Belgians, Dutch, all drive on the right-hand side of the road and they have to take one. I have also been driving safely here for over a year. I've learnt a few things, like having to park in the direction of the traffic. I even, on one occasion, drove on the lefthand side of the road for a few yards when leaving Karen's house - I had a Canadian friend in the car with me, but she didn't notice. Never did it again.

Did I fail because of all those 'bad habits' we are always being told we pick up over the years? Well, I think pretty much that we know what those habits are. I know mine. I will hold the car on the clutch too often when I should get out of gear and put the handbrake on.
So was the strength of my reaction because I failed? I don't think so, I'm not entirely sure, but I don't think so, although that was a blow and a severe inconvenience, I think it was the manner of the test.

It started with the examiner treating me like a foreigner who didn't understand Canadian terminology, progressed to him treating me like an idiot child who didn't listen properly. We had artistic differences about my reaction to a car flying around a blind corner towards me when I had started to turn - I stopped and so no-one was actually killed that time. But I failed on that. I most certainly made an error of judgement in accepting a cancellation test in a city I had never been to and which definitely held some surprises.
But bottom line, I wasn't the one being rude to him. I felt bludgeoned, mauled. I was, quite straightforwardly, shocked.

I was still shocked and physically affected the day after, but my healing process was going on because I received such amazing support from so many people. My first line of course was Kevin - who hadn't experienced the test itself, but was shocked by the outcome. His shockwaves kept coming because in driving home we came across the usual continual examples of appalling driving and hazardous road behaviour.

Although I didn't want to think about the situation I had been in, everytime I talked or wrote about it, and people heard me and expressed horror, I healed a bit more.

I couldn't help contrasting this experience with how I felt when the car got towed not long after I came here. I had parked too close to a fire hydrant and I came out at night, in a part of Vancouver I wasn't familiar with, to find that the car had disappeared. I naturally assumed it had been stolen. When, later, it became clear what had happened, it seemed worse to me. I understand someone stealing your car, I don't even now understand the city putting a lone woman in a vulnerable position.

I didn't have so many friends here, but those I did have had all experienced being towed and thus, although it was annoying to them when it happened, they were more accepting of it, they didn't understand my feelings of outrage, of violation.

Friends in the UK couldn't quite get their head round the idea of a car being towed away.
'So...didnt you see the road markings?'they'd ask.
'There weren't any.'
'Signs then,'
'None, I checked so many times for both..'
'If there were no signs and no road markings surely they can't legally do anything,'
'They did though,'
'Well, how do they let you know what's happened to the car?'
'They don't.'
'But how is that legal, what if something had happened to you?'
'They don't seem to think that's their responsibility.'
'But....' disbelief.

In Britain no-one could understand how it was possible for this to happen, government, even local government has a duty not to put its citizens or any other persons for that matter, at risk.
Here, I couldn't understand the apathy towards the process, but they couldn't understand the strength of my feelings. I felt defeated. I wanted to go home.

This time however, I knew I would recover. People's reactions were all of outrage, everyone I spoke to understood. I felt supported.

But I think I really got to the heart of my reaction when Kevin reminded me of the experience I had on the seacat to Calais.

I had borrowed Austen and Sue's car and they had managed to acquire a car with automatic transmission. I had never driven one of these before, but Austen gave me a short tutorial and off I went. All was well until I was trying to park it on the ferry. The cat had a tightly spiral parking zone and the person who was directing the parking was getting very cross and rude. Lairy, big time.

I became irritated because we had to keep stopping on a turning slope, not a problem at all to me had the car had a clutch, like I said, that's my bad habit, but with no gears, I didn't have fine enough control over this car. The man, little jobsworth, started gesturing and shouting at me. I was getting flustered. But in this situation I was able to say fuckit! I stopped, put the handbrake on, got out of the car to the annoyance of the oppo, and said to Kevin, 'I don't care if we're only insured for me to drive, I can't do this without gears, you've driven an automatic before, you'll have to park it.' I was able to do it on my terms, take control of the situation and shut the annoying little shit up. And that, was that.

In retrospect, that's what I should have done there in Coquitlam. I should have pulled over somewhere safely and told him politely and firmly to shut the hell up. It wouldn't have changed the outcome, but it would have saved me a lot of grief.

We live and learn. No-one wants bad things to happen to themselves or their friends or family, but when something like this does happen, it's important to gain strength from it.
Yesterday, I received one of those power-point presentation e-mails that I thought at first was going to be cheesy, but in the end it made me smile.
A man's donkey fell into the well, and as he wondered how he was going to get the animal out he just decided,
'The donkey's old and lame, and the well is useless now, I'll just fill the well in.'
So he shovelled dirt down the well. When the donkey realised what was happening to him, he panicked at first, but then he shook each layer of dirt off and stepped onto it. With the last shovelful of dirt, the donkey was able to step out of the well.

There was some additional bit about the donkey coming back and biting the man in the behind, but it doesn't really work for English-English speakers because we have two different words, ass for donkey, arse for backside.

And what have I learnt?
That chocolate is the greatest cure known to womankind. As are friends and family.