Before I commenced pursuing that all-consuming juggernaut known as a master's degree in the fall of 2007, I had begun reading James Valliant's The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics. The juggernaut has forced me to shelve the book until after I complete the degree in the spring of 2009. However, I did read enough to get a chuckle from a story about Ayn Rand's unsuccessful attempts to learn from her husband, Frank O'Connor, how to drive an automobile.
Poor Frank! I can sympathize fully with the man. He would have done well to have spent a relatively small sum to send his wife to a professional driving school. Fortunately, New York City has decent mass transit so her lifelong lack of a driver's license never got in the way of her success.
I found myself in similar circumstances after marrying my wife Leslie in 1991. Although she had driver's education in high school and passed the requisite tests to get her license, she had essentially zero experience alone behind the wheel. The relatives with whom she lived never let her drive their car while she attended school in the United States after she left the Republic of Panama at the age of 15. By the time she completed her associate's degree at the age of 21 and we married, her driving skills had become rusty indeed. Unlike New York City, our area of east central Florida, known as the Space Coast, has poor mass transit. The Space Coast Area Transit (SCAT) bus system leaves much to desire for all but the most desperate and most patient commuters who have hours to burn. This condition makes individual driving a must.
"No problem," I thought naively, "I'll just get her behind the wheel and coach her until she gains confidence."
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Poor Leslie! The ignorance and fallacies of my plan became evident soon enough. I quickly learned that teaching someone to drive requires nerves of steel and the patience of a saint. I have neither. Between my shortcomings as a teacher and her own terror of making a mistake, instructing her in basic driving skills became a mutually masochistic relationship.
The final straw came when we practiced parking in the local community college parking lot. The layout of this lot consisted of rows of facing spots separated by grass medians bordered by concrete wheel stops. Leslie carefully pulled into the spot. "Now just gently pull forward until you feel the front wheels contact the concrete wheel stop, then hit the brake and put the transmission into park," I coached. She became confused and pressed the gas pedal instead of the brake pedal. WHUMP! She drove my little 1987 Honda Accord hatchback over the wheel stop, the front wheels now resting in the grass median with the wheel stop behind them.
Of course, I reacted with a cool, detached demeanor -- not.
"GAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!!!!!!"
She panicked again and pressed the gas again, pushing the car's front wheels over the facing wheel stop. WHUMP!
"GAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!! SHUT IT OFF!!! JUST SHUT THE GODDAMNED THING OFF!!!!!!!!!" I bellowed.
She put the car into park and turned off the engine.
So there we sat, poor Leslie in tears, our hearts pounding, the hatchback straddled across two concrete wheel stops and a grass median, marooned in an empty parking lot on a Sunday afternoon, visions of negative cash flow dancing in my head as I imagined her wrecking our one and only vehicle.
We traded places and I managed to pull forward across the two slabs of concrete without damaging the underside of the car. We returned home and discontinued our "lessons" indefinitely. Fortunately, her only real transportation needs at the time involved attending the community college to complete core classes for a bachelor's degree. It was a five minute drive so I could just drop her there on the way to work and retrieve her on the way home. But I knew that eventually she would have to conquer the driving demon. The only question was how.
I pondered this for a couple of months before I cracked open the Yellow Pages, located a driving school, called, and explained the situation. Their fees were actually quite reasonable, so I made an appointment and shared the news with Leslie. "By the way," I said, "you are starting professional driving lessons this Saturday." Notice I did not "ask" if she wanted driving lessons. I said "you are starting" driving lessons. Some here will protest my presumptuous assertiveness but since you neither pay my bills nor live my life your protests count for naught with me.
The instructor, Monica, came to our house that Saturday with her own car featuring the traditional triangular "student driver" sign on the top of the car. Slowly but surely, over the ensuing weeks, Leslie grew proficient at driving under Monica's angelic tutelage. Finally, Leslie had the confidence needed to drive wherever she wanted to go!
This, of course, wrought new challenges. With her core classes nearing an end at the community college, the university an hour away, and our household cash flow showing a narrow positive margin, we needed a way to achieve our goals without breaking us financially. Fortunately, SCAT had a carpool referral service so I scoured the handbook of potential drivers. I managed to carpool to work between 1992 and 1999 while Leslie drove my car to finish school and gain some work experience in various jobs. Depending upon the price metrics of choice, I could easily show how this gained us $20,000 on our bottom line over that time frame. But as workforce reductions dried the pool of drivers by the middle of 1999, we finally purchased her a 1996 Honda Accord sedan and I returned to solo commuting in my 1987 Honda Accord hatchback.
I have to wonder how life might have been different for Frank O'Connor and Ayn Rand if they had taken similar steps. Where would she have driven? What new doors would have opened to her? How would it have figured into her writing? These questions, while impossible to answer definitively, still make for fun speculations.
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