Image via Complex Original
Being a teenager is no doubt a difficult time in your life. So hard, in fact, that when it's happening, you think it's, like, the hardest part of your whole life (laughable, but that's a different post). Your body is changing, you're finding out what a high school clique looks like, you're taking AP courses for the first time, and you have to survive those awkward run-ins with the opposite sex. But possibly the most stressful part of it all comes from something that you've been dreaming about for years. That something is getting your license and finally getting to drive.
To many, this is the most important event in your life up to that point. You're finally free! But first, you have to go through what seems like a completely unnecessary obstacle course that is driver's education. That means long lectures on Saturday mornings and being at the mercy of your instructor and the other being instructed. Take a look back on why learning to drive was the scariest part of being a teen.
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Everyone will be gunning for you.
Fear factor: DEFCON 1
Survival tip: Stand your ground.
For student drivers, they're just little kids with hopes and dreams of getting the freedom of their driver's license. In order to do that, you have to follow the rules. For everybody else, student drivers might as well be a road block. That stupid cheese wedge on top of the car or bumper sticker on the rear is equivalent to a giant target. It seems like people will go out of their way to tailgate, honk, or speed by you, complete with a glare that would kill a small mouse. The fact that you are a new driver makes them feel like seasoned NASCAR professionals, and for some reason, they feel like that gives them the right to be dicks.
Parent's will constantly blurt out warnings.
Fear factor: Premature heart failure
Survival tip: Deep breaths.
For a good six months after you begin driving, parents will not trust any on-road decision you make. It can vary from them trying to grab the wheel to pressing an imaginary brake pedal. The worst is the whole ... "slow down, slower, stop, STOP, STAHHHP, OMG STOPPPP!!!!!!" sequence. You'd think you were murdering a baby or something. But the worst part is that they likely hold the future of your driving privileges in their hands. So you have to try to stay calm. Because if you are like, "SHUT UP, I KNOW," chances are you won't be getting to take the car out to the movies later on.
They give you the slideshow of doom.
Fear factor: Stomach-turning
Survival tip: Call out sick.
Anybody who has been through Driver's Education can tell you about the slideshow. It contained dozens of gruesome pictures of other kids who weren't safe drivers: showing cars wrapped around trees, headless people lying in the median, and what appears to be Halloween but is actually a man's face on the road. They're trying to scare you into driving by the rules. It works in scaring you, but, c'mon, everybody's going to break the rules in the beginning.
Merging onto the highway for the first time.
Fear factor: Change of pants needed
Survival tip: Avoid rush hour like the plauge.
Where did all these cars come from? It felt like everybody was bearing down on you at about 250mph. In the community of driver's education teachers, that day is known as "Sphincter Day." You know those TV sequences when somebody is feeling claustrophobic and the room starts to turn and feel smaller and smaller, narrowing into a little tiny stripe? Well, this is the real life version of that. Except you have a guard rail on one side and some other pissed off driver on the other side who thinks you're trying to cut them off.
You will be at the mercy of other people's terrible driving when in the back seat.
Fear factor: Varying from fair to "oh my god we're going to die"
Survival tip: Distract yourself with smartphone games.
The Driver's Ed. instructor has his special brake pedal, but that's pretty much all when it comes to safety features. An extra foot on the brakes won't do much good when some ditzy 16-year-old steers the car right into the median at 65mph. Not all kids are as good at learning and following instruction as you. They also don't have the natural instinct for what it takes to get behind the wheel. Maybe it was that slideshow that made them such nervous wrecks.
