Let's (try!) to Get a Driver's License ...in France!

Driving + the French language equals one anxiety producing hairball!

A little Background Information

I learned to drive at 18 in my small town of Fairfield, Connecticut. I waited so long to do this because, frankly, I had no need for driving. I had an older sister who, for some strange reason, didn’t mind driving me around town. I also think somewhere deep down, I was a little afraid of “getting behind the wheel”.

My mother was fond of saying “When you get your license, you have a license to kill”. This statement terrified me. And seeing how I never wanted to hurt anyone, I kept kicking the can further down the road until my older sister left for college. Then I was stranded.

My sister and I, the year she got her license. We’re only 13 months apart, so “tagging along” with her was a bit easier for me than it might be for my own girls who are 4 years apart.

My husband to this day, says I’m a horrible driver. He blames the “way” that I learned to drive for all my faults.

It was 1988. I lived in a small town, so there were no “Driving schools” with fancy cars and spiffy marketing messages coming to pick me up for driving lessons (like my daughter had back in L.A.).

All I had was an empty high school parking lot, and my Dad. Mom just didn’t have the stomach for it. She must have reasoned that this seemed like “Men’s Work” anyway.

My “Driving School”

So off we went every Sunday morning to practice driving in The Staples High School parking lot.

The slight snag in this strategy was that Dad isn’t what I’d call a traditional-teacher-type. He’s always been fond of the “trial and error” method of learning. “Just get out there and give it your best shot. I’ll be here on the sidelines and let you know if you’re doing it right”. That was his motto. And this could apply to just about anything; riding a bike, swimming, job interviewing or even cooking!

I truly think this is where my love of recipe development came from. I “learned to cook” from watching Dad, who rarely used recipes. In his mind, recipes were just a “suggestion” anyway.

My sister and I making pizzas while Dad looked on taking pictures to let us know we were “doing it right!”

He also, heaven help him, is a wildly creative individual and gets easily distracted when faced with the “mundane.” His mind is always working, and I think these driving lessons must have bored the man to tears.

So he’d settle into the passager seat with the Sunday Edition of the New York Times. I realize most of everything now is online, but if any of you remember how monstrous the Sunday Edition of the New York Times was back in the day…you would wonder, like me, what he thought he was doing? How the heck was he going to get through all that and teach me to drive? Well, it was a parking lot, so how much trouble could I get into?