Broome Broome

Yesterday was my first driving lesson. I can now drive around a block, on loop, which I wouldn't have thought possible the day before, so I consider Lesson 1 a success.

The toughest part was, as predicted, the fact that the lessons are in Chinatown. No one in that part of the city, neither the tourists nor the locals, considers the street a place where cars might be, or looks to see if there might be a moving car near them, or makes any distinction between the crosswalk and the rest of the street. I knew all this, having been a pedestrian myself on these streets, but... wow. On one block, tiny, very elderly women kept darting out from between parked cars, utterly oblivious to the moving vehicles. Like Mr. Hyacinth Bucket, I now know how to "mind the pedestrians."

I suppose I could look at this as an 'if you can drive here, you can drive anywhere' situation, but my plan at this point is to take enough lessons so I can get the license before my permit expires, then express my undying love to the MTA, smelly and permanently off-schedule as it is, for keeping me from needing to drive.