POSTCARD FROM NEW YORK: Taxi Driver

NEW YORK—Getting your driver’s license is an American rite of passage—a doorway to freedom, a symbol of independence.

That’s why most teenagers sign up for driving lessons and take their road tests the minute that they’re eligible. Most teens—not me.

I can’t tell you exactly why I never got my license. I think it was a combination of being really busy during high school and growing up in New York City, a place where alternate-side-of-the-street parking and deranged drivers can make having a car more of a nightmare than a godsend.

Whatever the reason for my former lack of driving ambition, I have been recently plagued by the fear that I will never get my license and will end up as one of those little old ladies who have to rely on shuttle buses to transport them from place to place. Yes, I know I’m crazy, but sometimes insanity spurs us to action—so I have made learning to drive my summer mission.

One of my best friends from high school who similarly never learned to drive agreed to join me in my quest for the holy driver’s license. Because she was scheduled to get out of school a few weeks earlier than I, she was in charge of finding the driving school. About a week after I got home, she called me, very excited.

“I think I've found the place,” she said. “It’s called ‘Professional Driving School.’”

“Professional Driving School?” That name sounded about as legitimate to me as “High Quality Fast Food” or “Authentic Mexican-Chinese Cuisine,” but my commitment to learn to drive overrode my better judgement. “Okay,” I said. “Let’s go for it.”

I arrived at the driving school for my first lesson, and they sent me outside where my instructor was awaiting me. His name, they told me, is Jay.

I introduced myself to Jay. “We need to get gas,” he said. “Get in.” Jay is a man of few words.

Being an enemy of the awkward pause, I attempted to strike up a conversation.

“How long have you been a driving instructor?” I asked—it seemed like a safe enough question to me.

“Oh, this is my second day,” he replied.

Um.

“I had two students get into accidents yesterday,” he continued. “But they were pretty cool about it.”

I smiled and laughed. He was joking, right?

We got stuck in traffic. A word to the wise: never schedule your first driving lesson to coincide with rush hour in New York City.

Jay turned to me. “Why don’t you drive?” It was more of a command than a request. Before I could respond, he had hopped out of the car and run around to the passenger side. Talk about “baptism by fire.” I climbed over to the driver’s seat and buckled up.

There was no introductory lesson—not even a five-minute demonstration on how to make the hunk of metal stop and go. The only words of wisdom shared by my dear driving instructor were that if he at any point yelled, “Hands off!” I had to remove my hands from the wheel and let him take control. Those instructions were somehow less than reassuring.

The traffic started to move. Oh God.

I relied on skills acquired during my previous driving experiences, which consisted of the few times my dad let me drive around the block and childhood escapades in the bumper car rink.

“You’re an aggressive driver,” Jay said. Go figure.

I slowed down and attempted to be more cautious, only to be chastised a few minutes later for driving too slowly.

“But I was trying to get in touch with my ‘passive driver’ side,” I quip.

Note to self: sarcasm will get you nowhere with a driving teacher.

Lesson One consisted of Jay familiarizing himself with exactly what I could and could not do, with an emphasis on the latter. He tried to teach me how to parallel park, but I had a great deal of trouble with the backing up part. Jay told me that I was too stiff, that I was taking this driving thing too seriously. “What are you—some kind of investment banker?” he asked me.

Investment banker—ha. No, I’m just a Harvard student.

During that first lesson, I also learned how to change lanes in the face of a sea of oncoming traffic. Jay’s method? Give it gas and go.

I survived that first lesson without hitting anyone or causing any major traffic jams, so I considered it a success. But slightly scarred by the nightmare of driving in rush hour traffic, I decided to schedule my second lesson for a Saturday afternoon, figuring this alteration would make Lesson Two a walk in the park. I figured wrong.

While driving along New York’s lower East Side, Jay said to me, “Why don’t you drive up that ramp there?”

“But that ramp will put me on the FDR Drive,” I protested. The FDR Drive is one of New York City’s major highways, notorious for its heavy traffic.

“I know,” was Jay’s response. Well, he’s the teacher, I thought. So I went for it. Thanks to some form of divine intervention, traffic was relatively light at that moment and the merge onto the highway was manageable.

“Just go with the traffic,” was Jay’s professional advice. So I switched into the middle lane and followed the car in front of me. After barely five minutes, I glanced at my odometer and realized that I was speeding. I informed Jay, to which he responded, “Well you don’t have to do 70.” Okay.

The next hurdle arrived when a cab tried to cut me off. Jay told me to floor it. “Never give in to the ‘Yellow Daemons!’” he yelled. I sensed a hint of latent road rage in my externally placid driving instructor.

Jay informed me that we would be spending Lesson Two driving from lower Manhattan to the Bronx and back. The Bronx? I laughed. He wasn’t kidding.

But I survived. And I actually had a good time. I learned that accelerating as opposed to braking on a curve can actually make the ride smoother, and my lane changes are getting better all the time.

I have a few lessons left before my road test—which is scheduled for August 20th, in case you’d like to put in a good word for me with the Road Test Gods—and I can only imagine what Jay has left in store for me.

But I’m slowly beginning to realize that maybe this seemingly unwarranted faith that Jay has in my driving abilities is a good thing. I am actually becoming a confident driver, and the thought of me driving a car doesn’t seem so ridiculous anymore.

If nothing else, Jay has taught me to trust my own instincts, a lesson which is perhaps as true as can be to the coming-of-age tradition of learning to drive.

Kate L. Rakoczy ’04, a Crimson editor, is a social studies concentrator in Lowell House. When she’s not terrorizing the streets of Manhattan, she works for a non-profit organization that conducts research and publishes reports on American labor.