Mama Malkavian's House

(J) First, Alison reads the Tennessee state driver manual. Then, Alison takes the written portion of the driving test and earns a learner’s permit.        Alison has moved to Arkansas by this point. She's taking a new permit test. It should be roughly the same rules as Tennessee, right? And it's Arkansas; how hard can it be? Does Alison study for the permit test?   No (L) Yes (M)

(H) Alison is driving five miles per hour and feels like she is speeding. She can barely move left or right unless she compensates and make a sharp turn. So she speeds forward at all of five miles an hour toward a brick wall at the side of the parking lot. Alison is totally wigging out now stop-going between the brakes and the pedal. It is not going well for Alison and she feels like she will never get past this level of driving. Go to paragraph (J) if Alison persists and enrolls in driving lessons for adults with anxiety. Alison gives up, scroll up to paragraph (B) But understand, if you go to paragraph (B) again, you will spend the next ten years worrying about how Alison can't drive. In those ten years, Alison has two babies and her mom begins to age. Eventually Mom will need rides to her appointments and Alison's kids will need rides to school and such.  While Alison is pregnant with her second child, she still doesn't have a license, and her mom is doing a lot of t...

  (G) The bus can be challenging. For instance, there are weird people on the bus, like the gothic dude in a long black trench coat whose therapist told him he needed to make more friends, so he tried to introduce himself shake Alison’s hand and find out what they had in common. Alison gets that people have problems and some are unique, but making friends on the city bus with no context was too much for her and she played it off like she was a germaphobe (totally not) and would not shake the weird man’s hand. There was also the time a man asked to buy her while she waited alone at a bus stop. Graphic much? Thematic? All true, but it really happened . Alison has to make the decision to keep riding the bus (bounce back to G in an infinite loop until you decide to go to paragraph (c)) or learn to drive at paragraph (C).

  (F) Alison learns to drive the standard way: it can go two ways: Alison is nervous, but functioning. Lee teaches her how to make a left hand turn. Eventually she is driving on roads and merging into different lanes and even driving on the freeway. Alison has independence. She can do things for Lee, like pick up groceries without making him go too. Alison can go to work and now worry about buying gas instead of taxi fares. But Alison needs to take the Tennessee state license test to move forward. Take the license test without driving school: go to paragraph (K) Like this? Go to paragraph (i).

(E) Alison called an Uber to pick her up for work. It is peak time for Ubers on Saturday at 12:00 p.m. Alison’s closing shift starts at 1:00 p.m. Alison already feels like she is running late one hour before her shift; that’s just her personality. The popularity in Uber caused the price to spike to $20 for a one-way trip to work. That is a lot of money for Alison. She books the ride anyway with little choice left. Fifteen minutes later, with forty-five minutes to her shift, a red SUV rolls up matching the description and license number. Sherri is her driver. Sherri looks like the woman in Uber’s profile. Sherri and Alison have a pleasant conversation about how nice the weather is in San Diego compared to Memphis (they don’t even salt their roads!). Fifteen minutes later, Alison arrives at the mall. She is not at her store yet. Alison has thirty minutes to get a coffee, to her store, and sip on her coffee while it is still hot. Alison is peculiar and likes to arrive to her place of wor...

(D) Alison works at her local mall on the other side of town. Usually, her husband drives her to work, but when he is working Alison is on her own. Alison has a direct bus route to the mall near her home, and she can walk to the bus stop easily. But taking the bus is challenging. Public transportation involves a lot of walking and waiting outside. This becomes exhausting, especially when Alison misses a bus or feels compelled to leave too early in order to not miss her bus. Being bound to public transportation limits Alison’s freedom. The bus routes are limited, and some don’t run on the weekend, causing Alison to spend more money than she would taking Uber to work on Saturdays. Traveling across town can take several hours. What does Alison do? Continue taking the bus to work. Scroll to paragraph (G) .

  (C) Alison takes and passes the written portion of the driving test. Now she has a learner’s permit. It is time for her to learn to drive. On a day off, Alison takes the wheel with her husband and now teacher in the passenger seat. They a parked in an empty parking lot to what once was a thriving mall. “You should be able to handle this much better than Susie,” said Lee. Susie the Subaru had been their SUV. Now they had a smaller sedan type car. “You just press the button to turn it on. You don’t even have to put the keys in the ignition.” Alison pressed the button and watched many lights turn on the dash and radio area. Lee showed Alison how to operate the windshield wipers, defroster, and blinker. Lee may have shown Alison other important details, but this story is written by a woman who does not know how to drive. So, please suspend disbelief and operate on the notion that Lee is a fine driving instructor and Alison learned many things. “Put the gear in drive. See, it is the ...