Choice: Afterward
Afterward:
When I was nine years old, I took the driving course at Legoland. Kids under thirteen could get in little brick cars and drive down roads and follow traffic lights on a safe course at two miles an hour. Then we all received a congratulations and provisional Legoland driver's license with a place for our name, year and a picture. After I took the Legoland driving course, I felt so motivated to drive for real that I counted the years until I turned sixteen! I was not aware of my limitations at the time.
Not achieving freedom in the form of a driver's license bothered me my entire adult life. I had recurring dreams about attempting to drive a car in the wrong seat. I felt uneasy thinking about my situation throughout my life. I kept my Legoland driver's license I received when I was nine in my wallet as a joke. I had one made at Disney World too, when I was 29.
One time, I thought it was funny to bust out my Legoland driver's license with a sticker photo of eight-year-old me and say out loud to my colleagues, "This is the closest thing I have to a driver's license." It didn't go over as well as I expected it to. Some people just don't have a sense of humor. I had to spend eighteen years of my adult life asking for rides and explaining that, no, I don't drive. Yes, I know, I've tried.
It took me eighteen years of my adult life before I got my driver's license. I had a great deal of anxiety about it leading up to taking driving lessons. I believed that there was too much information on the road around me and that I couldn't process it all like a normal driver. I think I was correct in the beginning. The first several times I tried to drive a car, I felt completely out of control. This inability to operate a motor vehicle lasted into my late twenties with a couple of failed attempts at practicing driving.
I didn't belong out on the road, alone in the world, at eighteen. My mom made the right decision to not encourage me to drive when I was sixteen. I was always behind the curve in developmental maturity. I would not have known how to conduct myself in a fender bender with another driver had that person been angry or less than professional. I probably could have handled myself alone by my mid-twenties, but it is just as well that I started really working on it in my thirties.
If you are high functioning/low support needs/my kind of autistic (formerly called Asperger's syndrome), I reckon you are capable of learning to drive. I always resented the message "of course you can do it; if I can you can too" dismissing my entire autistic experience. \
Autistic people all have different needs and limitations. I will not speak for you. I always maintained that I may or may not be capable of driving, that there are intelligent adults like myself who just... can't, and that we will only know by trying. I will either succeed or fail, but we just don't know. I had a lot of pressure on me and unsolicited advice leading up to this. I don't want to do the same to you. But, you only know if you know, so TRY! If learning from a relative isn't working, try professional training.
The hardest part about learning how to drive is... learning how to drive. The learning curve is steep. It's exhausting at first. My instructor at Maxwell Driving School told the whole class that it will be exhausting at first. That means you are not special or disabled if you find practicing driving exhausting. This too shall pass and if you learn to drive, you will get over the hump that is the learning curve and find it much easier as you improve. If you are autistic, you could look for a driving school that specializes in autism. But, Maxwell is for all adult learners and they helped me perfectly well and changed my life.
I didn't understand what Lee meant by "it will become second nature." Especially while practicing for the first year. But, it actually does get better as it did for me. I slow and speed up along with traffic without thinking too hard about it. I stop at signs before I question it. Even if learning is hard, this too will pass and it will become easy. If you're like me. I'm not telling you this is for everyone. But it's a good chance you are capable.
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