Vehicularly challenged

Not everyone is good at everything, right? Maybe you can’t cook, maybe you can’t dance. (My cooking is average and dancing? Let me tell you, I used to be able to bust out a fairly awesome Running Man back in the day, now my knees start to ache just at the mere thought of it.)

Me . . . lets see . . . where to start? Well, to my chagrin I STILL can’t read music - two years of guitar, years of choir and singing lessons and nuttin, I consider it a personal failing. I also can’t for the life of me hold a conversation on a phone and I am physically unable to take a compliment. Seriously, try and tell me I look good and I’ll regale you with stories of how much I hate my hair this long/short/colour and I don’t really like my butt in these jeans and do you think I’ve put on weight?

And if you don’t think I look good? Speak now or forever hold your peace, because I’m from The Chandler Bing school of You Can’t Insult Me If I Get There First (Defence Mechanism Masked As Witty Rejoinder). I was their star pupil. I had perfect attendance, I was the class swot, head girl, valedictorian, I graduated summa cum laude with honours, I excelled in The Miranda Hobbes Method of Sarcasm As Cover Fire to the point where they asked me to come back and lecture. Hell, they named a building after me. I’m quick with the self-deprecating put downs and the mocking, is what I’m saying.

But I digress.

My worst ‘Can’t Do That’? She is automobile shaped.

I?! Have done it all, baby. I’ve locked my keys in my car, I’ve left my headlights on all night and I once sat in my (at the time) brand new car (Mazda, nickname GiGi – she’s French) for almost half an hour just trying to work out how to open the hood. (Turns out there's this little latch down by my right knee that I have to pull. The damn thing is HIDDEN, okay? I had to look in the freaking manual and you KNOW how much I hate that.)

Once? I drove my first car (Holden Barina, nickname Sly) for twenty minutes on a stone flat tyre. On the Monash freeway. At 100 clicks an hour. Wondering to myself . . . wha?? . . .whhhhhy is my steering wheel pulling to the left like that? It wasn’t until I stopped at a traffic light and the wheel rim soared over the bonnet that I realised it wasn’t my steering that was the problem. To be fair, I had never experienced a flat tyre before. The awesomeness of it was that as I pulled into work the VERY NEXT DAY, the spare tyre that the RACV guy had changed my flat for? Also expired. Flump. Right down to the rim.

When I lived in Perth and hadn’t had my licence for very long, I must have locked my keys in Sly at least five times in the first six months. PapaBelle became quite adept at breaking into my car. And I am legendary at work for the time I locked my keys in the car whilst it was still running.

Case for the defense : the defendant was driving to work when she indicated to change lanes and heard an electrical ‘bzzzzzt’ noise, which the defendant can only describe as "like a dozen angry college age fratboy bees had taken up residence behind my steering wheel for a kegger and the beer had run out". Thinking that possibly said indicators were no longer working and cognisant of how dangerous that is (I was new to Melbourne so was still used to the Perth method of actually using your indicators when you change lanes, its crazy, I know) the defendant left her car running, flicked the indicator to the right and jumped out of her automobile to confirm. Automatically locking it behind her. The defense rests.
(Luckily, because of the above mentioned past experience, I carry a spare key with me at all times. Unluckily, it was in my handbag, which was still on my passenger side seat. It was YEARS before I was allowed to forget that).

On the plus side, I (like to think) I’m a pretty good driver, just a little vague with the specifics - blown tyre incident notwithstanding. The accidents I’ve been involved in thus far have been at the fault and insurance concerns of the other drivers involved and I’ve only ever gotten one speeding infraction in my 11 or so years behind the wheel, so my record is pretty blemish free and (knock on wood) will hopefully remain that way.

The brilliance of new car GiGi is that she's fairly idiot proof, as not only does she beep at me if I leave my lights on after I’ve removed my key from the ignition, she also beeps at me if I open my car door without removing my key from the ignition. However, she has no such warning beep for when I neglect to correctly utilise the parking brake. So I waltzed merrily out of the house Tuesday morning to find that she was not in her usual spot, but was instead nosed up against our backyard gate. By the grace of the parking gods, she had less than half a metre to roll and didn’t pick up much speed, therefore she only bears a tiny paint scrape as witness to my complete and utter stupidity, my total lack of car sense and the fact that when it comes to automobiles I am a wee bit ‘challenged’.

Oh, and math. Yeah, I don’t get that shit at all.