Driving Lessons

I am currently learning to drive. This will open a world of possibilities for me, so I am told. I can nip to the shops and run my stupid errands etc. This possibility has prompted me to think about a Kurt Vonnegut quote, taken from an 2004 interview with him, in which he said: “I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you any different.”

In the interview he describes buying a single envelope, and not having a stack of envelopes in a cupboard somewhere, as his wife suggests.

“So I go to this newsstand across the street where they sell magazines and lottery tickets and stationery. I have to get in line because there are people buying candy and all that sort of thing, and I talk to them. The woman behind the counter has a jewel between her eyes, and when it’s my turn, I ask her if there have been any big winners lately.

I get my envelope and seal it up and go to the postal convenience centre down the block at the corner of Forty-seventh Street and Second Avenue, where I’m secretly in love with the woman behind the counter. I keep absolutely poker-faced; I never let her know how I feel about her. One time I had my pocket picked in there and got to meet a cop and tell him about it.

Anyway, I address the envelope to Carol in Woodstock. I stamp the envelope and mail it in a mailbox in front of the post office, and I go home. And I’ve had a hell of a good time.”

I feel this sentiment in my bones. I recently enjoyed reading Heather Parry’s Substack post against convenience. She talks about first encountering Huel - the meal replacement shakes you’ve seen, designed for convenience as opposed to weight loss - how it makes up part of a broader culture of maximum convenience, geared towards freeing up our time to be more productive, to do more work.

Parry talks about some of the pleasures of inconvenience: of grinding the coffee beans, of slowly pouring over the water. She is also cognizant of the privileges and circumstances that allow for these pockets of time. In my pre-parenting days I, too, enjoyed slowly pouring over the water, watching it brew through the filter in exquisite little drips. Now I put the coffee on before bed, and it is set to a timer, so I can come downstairs and drink coffee until it bleeds out of my eyes, because it is not unlikely I spent several chunks of the night lying on the floor beside my toddler’s cot while he demanded "hold the hand!” (kiss the ring!) if I breathed so much as an intention of creeping back to my own soft, warm bed.

I started learning to drive as a bargaining chip when my mum started working for a posh gym chain, meaning she could bestow one free membership to either me or my sister. “If you give it to me,” I offered. “I will learn to drive.” My idiot sister had already learnt to drive! She didn’t have a foot to stand on! Also, I reasoned, it probably would improve my life to not have to take a tram and then a bus every time my son wants to see the dinosaurs at the museum (every week).

Now, eighteen months later I still cannot drive. But I like cycling to my gym, in one of Manchester’s weirdest suburbs, past the riding schools; horses grazing on the fields, the wind turbines spinning in the distance. I like walking to the Post Office, through the park, past the charity shops. I even like taking my son on the tram, watching him pull his hat over his eyes, singing the theme tune to Mickey Mouse Club House at the top of his lungs to the utter fucking indifference of the other commuters. Driving feels so antithetical to Vonnegut’s sentiment: training your body to move like a machine, not looking at the horses in the fields because if you do you might run someone over. It’s awful!

I have my driving test booked in three days, and it is possible, just, that by the time I publish this post, I would have passed. It is more possible I will not pass, and will just keep taking driving lessons indefinitely. I keep going to the hairdressers because my hair keeps growing. I keep going to the dentists because my teeth continue to rot. And I keep taking driving lessons because I cannot fucking learn to drive. But at least I am having a nice time farting around while I do so.