By I passed my driving test a few weeks ago. Please don’t mistake this for a boast, though, because a) I’m 38 years old and b) it turns out that driving tests are a piece of cake.
Sure, they might not seem like a piece of cake at the time – they certainly didn’t feel like a piece of cake when I took and failed them multiple times as a nervous 17-year-old – but now it’s over and done and passed, I can see what an absolute walk in the park it is compared to the reality of actual day-to-day driving.
Because you know what a driving test is? It’s 40 minutes of driving around a quiet road in the middle of the day in silence. Perfect, beautiful, spirit-rejuvenating silence. You sit next to a guy in a high-vis jacket, but all he does is sporadically tell you which exit to take on roundabouts. It’s very peaceful. It’s basically a spa day.
And then you pass. And then you hire a car for the weekend, because you're excited to drive your family around. And only then are you confronted with the non-stop horror of parental driving.
We just had our first family day out. Eventually, I hope, I’ll recover from it. My hair will never grow back, and my teeth aren’t exactly going to ungrind themselves, but in time I’d like to think that my eye will stop twitching and I’ll stop jumping at loud noises. But, in the meantime, I’d like to propose some changes to the current British driving test, to better prepare parents for what they have in store.
Change one: The driver will enter and exit a complicated spiral roundabout in the dark, despite never having driven in the dark before, with a baby in the back. It will be past the baby’s bedtime, and the baby will be so apoplectically furious about this fact that his screaming will cause the interior of the car to literally vibrate. This, in turn, will cause your toddler to start shouting and your wife to flap about in the passenger seat in a fruitless bid to placate him. Also it’s rush-hour, and you’ve never driven in rush-hour before. To pass: the driver will need to reach the correct exit, only swear under his breath a maximum of 20 times, and not die.
Change two: While navigating a busy dual carriageway, the driver will need to explain the concept of a satnav to a three-year-old who – as someone born in the last half-decade – now sincerely believes that all music is controlled by an omnipotent disembodied voice named Alexa. Whenever the satnav has to issue an instruction, the toddler will start screaming “ALEXA! PLAY BABY SHARK!” at it so loudly that you miss most of the information and have to piece it together using nothing but half-remembered driving lessons and context cues. To pass: the driver will need to reach the correct destination, and not die.
Change three: The driver will need to divert his attention from the fast-moving stream of traffic ahead in order to figure out how the bloody childlocks work because the toddler has just realised that car doors can open in transit. Driver must hold his nerve as he thrashes wildly at the buttons to his right in a blind panic, opening and closing every window several times seemingly at random until he finally stumbles across the correct switch. He must then admonish the toddler in terms that are both scolding and understanding, while trying not to swerve off the road into a tree. To pass: the driver must not allow his child to topple out of the car and bounce down the road like a dropped pig.
Change four: Upon reaching a supermarket car park, the driver must not only be able to cope with the pressure of a yelping proximity sensor but also the pressure of an unnaturally jumpy wife who refuses to stop screaming “NONONONONONONO!” whenever you get within about three feet of a parked car. To pass: the driver must not a) drive off in a huff or b) shout “WELL YOU F**KING DO IT THEN” with such volcanic fury that it almost definitely imprints on the minds of his young children as the most formative memory of their entire childhoods.
Change five: The driver must complete his journey without longing for the days before he decided to learn to drive. Remember trains? Remember buses? Remember guilt-tripping your dad into giving you a lift, even though you’re nearly 40? Those were the days. God, those were the days. To pass: the driver must suck it up, because he chose this and this is his life now, and not die.
