Alexandra Paskhaver Column: Driving one crazy

Published 8:30 am Saturday, August 2, 2025

I don’t know how to drive.

Oh, of course I have a driver’s license. Getting one of those is easy enough.

All you have to do is nail your parallel parking, and the state deems you fit to careen around the roads.

I haven’t done a lot of wild driving around nearby suburban neighborhoods.

In fact, I haven’t driven much at all, because the minute I passed my exam, my dad took away the car keys.

It’s not that he doesn’t trust me. It’s that he doesn’t trust me and loves his car more than he loves me, or so it seems.

When it came to teaching me to drive, Dad hired a service rather than sit in the family automobile with me behind the wheel.

I was such a bad driver, I crashed during my first driving lesson.

It was snowing the whole time I was wheeling slowly around my neighborhood park. Going at five miles per hour, I thought, “Man, this driving thing is a piece of cake.”

I was happy to keep doing slow, controlled circles. Then my driving instructor got me on the highway.

We ended up behind a salt truck. As if going 60 mph with salt pinging off the windshield wasn’t enough, the car’s heating was struggling.

I would have loosened my grip on the wheel if I could feel my fingers. But I’m happy to say that I kept them at the 9 and 3 o’clock positions.

When we finally swung off the highway and went toward a traffic intersection, my instructor told me to slow down.

I pressed the brake. The car kept going. I pressed the brake harder. My instructor shoved his foot on top of mine and pressed down.

Nothing. We were sliding toward the fender of the truck in front of us. My instructor jerked the wheel to the side.

We bounced off the truck’s side and limped into the parking lot of a nearby Target.

I mentioned it would have been funnier if we’d nailed the Target, but the instructor didn’t seem to appreciate my humor.

The car’s driver side door was dented so badly that it barely opened. I managed to squeeze through and my driving instructor ended up driving me home.

And what a chauffeur he was. Professional, crisp, and not at all chatty. Though maybe he was unwilling to talk because I’d just caused a thousand dollars’ worth of damage to his ride.

Good thing he was responsible for paying for the car, because I wouldn’t have been able to afford fixing it.

When I got home, I regaled my family with my driving adventures. I talked about suburban roads and highways, about the salt truck and the fender bender.

My dad smiled a knowing, thoughtful smile.

“Try learning to drive in Brooklyn like I did,” he said. “It’s a thousand times harder.”

And I’ll bet it is, because I haven’t driven a car since I passed my driving test.

But I’ve heard it’s like riding a bike.

If you crash once, you’re prepped for all the subsequent times.

Alexandra Paskhaver is a software engineer and writer. Both jobs require knowing where to stick semicolons, but she’s never quite; figured; it; out. For more information, check out her website at apaskhaver.github.io.