I sucked…hard…No, really…really…

The title of this entry is absolutely accurate.

However, as much as I hate to admit that I sucked, it also doesn’t matter that I sucked. In fact, sucking allowed me to do more than if I’d nailed it.

What is “it” you ask?

Stunt Driving School. (Yes, I really did suck at it. Me, with all my cars and working on them, too. Yes, me. I sucked. Hard. I can’t believe it either…Well, maybe I can.)

Honestly, it wasn’t that I couldn’t drive. It was my stupid brain that kept making me do everything at once, rather than finding the right cadence. In essence, I was just too nervous. I wanted to do soooooo well that my very own desire to kick ass hindered my performance.

Not to mention that I ended up too girly to get the rear wheels locked up every time. I tried to use the one car with the foot brake, but I eventually bruised my foot because I’d stood on the pedal so hard so many times.

But y’know, none of any of my reasons for failure matters because I learned a helluva lot about driving and about myself. And honestly, if I hadn’t sucked, I wouldn’t have gotten to know the teacher and his assistants so well. They’re such a great group of guys. Really top notch in everything. Always willing to help and even answered stupid questions for researching some of the stunts in Driven to Distraction.

Bottom line, the teacher saw that underneath all my sucking, I really did want to learn and I had a passion for cars. He tried everything he could think of in order to get me to stop sucking, but I just somehow couldn’t. Still, he saw through.

And gave me an opportunity to take the class again.

I still sucked…just not as hard. I still learned a helluva lot more, too. And because I’d bruised my foot during the first class, I had to use the cars with the hand brake instead. I still had trouble getting a good lock up, sometimes, but I definitely did better overall.

A few of the highlights are as follows:

~ When my teacher successfully pissed me off enough to get a good pull on the hand brake and I did a nearly perfect sliding 90 box park.
~ In the middle of the second day when my teacher looked me straight in the eye and said, “You’re starting to get it.” (In that instant, I swear I almost cried.)
~ During lunch when he took me out in my Viper and got it up to 130 before running out of stopping distance.

The experience and adventure was absolutely incredible.

I’ll definitely be back. I gotta quit sucking one of these days and pass the darn class!

…Although, it seems I learned more by doing poorly. Hmmmm… Maybe I should keep sucking after all…

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