Arianna Moeller

Personal Essay
January 22, 2014


Lesson number 18.0

Some people are born with a natural delicacy. A natural virtuosity. An undefined capacity
of learning, which I like to call pragmatism. I am more of an intellectual; the type of comfort-
zone individual, rather than those reckless spirits that enjoy feeling in the edge of disaster.
Driving shouldnt be a verb related to adrenaline, unless you are watching a James-Bond movie.
Where I come from, Cumbayork, it is the synonym for being eighteen. Maturity some would
say. For people like me, learning how to drive turned into three weeks of desperation in an
attempt to earn my maturity diploma.

Driving lesson number 1 and 2 and 3 11. Two weeks trying to understand the
complexity of the gear. During the first days, my teacher would try to make me understand: - It
is not complicated. You just need to feel how the car shivers, and then, slowly, take your feet out
off the pedal. I never quite understood what he meant by feeling the car, but I kept my
quizzical looks up to myself. In my 11
th
lesson, I realized that not only was he loosing patience
with me, but I was loosing hope in myself. I had memorized all the steps to make the car get
moving, but I could not make it work. It always bumped, or turned off, or accelerated too fast, or
did not accelerate at all.

Driving lesson number 13. My teacher had come to the conclusion that driving in La
Primavera, a deserted area, where even a five year-year-old could learn was not going to take
me anywhere. You need to be part of the real world- he told me. I dont remember agreeing; I
just have a vague reminiscence of feeling how the real world collapsed my five senses when
Arianna Moeller
Personal Essay
January 22, 2014

reaching the Cumbayork rondure. Just thirty minutes later, I was in the backseat containing all
my tears from falling down my cheeks, and going back to the car center.

Driving lesson number 17 and final exam. Maybe it was divine mercy because I passed
the exam. Obviously nothing went smooth. The car turned off two times and I was sweating cold
during one hour. Driving with a person like me to my proctor teacher, must have been terrifying
and exasperating and tense and irritating, but, somehow, comforting because I did not kill myself
in the attempt. I survived and even passed with an 18/20, which to me, sounds like a gold medal.

Now the question left to ask is not: What does it feel to be mature? Or, what does it feel
to overcome your difficulties? Because I didnt. I dont have a maturity diploma and I am not
any icon. I just passed my lesson number 17 and got a license to prove it. My difficulties are
still stockpiled waiting for me to sort them out, and solve them one by one. Still, the difficult part
is finding a solution for each of them, but I guess that that process is similar to my driving
lessons. Answers are embedded within lessons in which, almost never, you will succeed. Many
people may define it as persistence, but I like to think that small doses of failure, eventually will
lead to my success.