The big deal about getting a driving license.

The family is eating out. Probably not the best time to ask my dad if I can get the car out of the garage and bring it to the porch… then you are, but, forced to think - “If its not now… then its never. ”. So with all the necessary preamble, I began the negotiation. “Where are we going to eat dad?” I asked with the most innocent face that I could manage. The answer seemed garbled in all the reflexes that my mind was generating. It didn’t matter to me anyway… so I gave a polite nod and resumed to the next phase of my master plan. “Nice weather isn’t it… perfect for a drive… don’t you think?” My question seemed to have been carelessly misplaced in the series of statements that ensued between my parents. BUMMER. I would definitely not get the keys to the car… not until I get my driving license… not until I’m EIGHTEEN… not today…! The car stopped in the porch of that not too famous 3 star hotel… and a chauffeur came forward to open the door. I walked away from the car jealously eyeing him roll the car away to a sprawling parking lot. Dinner was served. It was, however, consumed by me with not all my attention… my mind was busy at work… formulating plots… reviewing mistakes and refining my approach for the next time… when suddenly a thought seemed to hit me in the face out of nowhere. WHAT IF I JUST ASKED??!! Straight… instead of looping the loop and beating about the bush… Nah! Never… It just wouldn’t work. Well, atleast it didn’t work the last few times… so I wasn’t going to risk it this time. The desserts were about to be served… I was losing time… I boldly moved on to PHASE 3. “So,” I asked my father “do you really enjoy driving?” hoping to get a more decent response compared to what happened at home. “Yeah” he said “but not always… not when there’s too much traffic… not when driving a car feels like sitting on a snail.” “Do you expect to face such a situation today?” I asked in the most natural of ways (atleast I think so)… but my statement triggered a series of alarms and I knew that bells were ringing in my parents’ ears. The very keen and trained ears of my parents could ‘HEAR BETWEEN THE LINES’… Damn! It was best to leave the situation as it was… if not try and deviate from the topic! There was an addition in my list of ‘What NOT to say’ in conjunction to this very delicate and tricky issue.

Not until after a lot of this happened, that my parents trusted me with the car. I was allowed to park the car in the garage. A very big development as far as I was concerned. My only ‘competition’, if the term takes the right meaning, was my mother who had only recently learned how to drive, and whose LICENSE (I’m putting ‘license’ in upper case, because that was the only reasonably convincing thing that differentiated my from my mother, apart from the fact that she is much older than me and that she is female.) was still shiny and new. However, as time went by I gained the confidence of my mother too… whenever we (mom and I) used to go out, she’d let me drive till the end of the road… (a small distance to drive… a giant leap for me)