Automatic girls

Hey, remember that Sex and the City episode where they're going to visit the Hamptons because Carrie's going to like three million baby showers (the one where Samantha says the baby looks like a bastard anyway) and all four girls get really pumped about their road trip? And they all get dressed up a la Grace Kelly with scarves and huge sunglasses and climb into their rental car and are rearing to go? And then Carrie turns to the girls and goes, "Ladies... who knows how to drive?" and everyone's face falls, because they live in New York City and have never learned how to drive, because why would they? Yeah, that's sort of how it is here, too.

We have to go to scuba lessons tomorrow morning in Durbanville, about 50 km away. And my group of four (how fitting; can I be Carrie?) is completely car-less. Rental cars, we heard, were cheap, so we looked into those. By "looked into," I mean the idea was considered for about five seconds until we realized that a) the cars are manual and b) everyone here drives on the wrong side of the road.

Four years ago, when I was learning to drive, my dad taught me on his car, which was a standard. Though even he, in his infinite patience, soon suggested I switch to Mom's minivan (the automatic), as I could never really get the hang of the clutch + gas combo. So, thanks, America. First, you won't switch to the metric system even though every other country in the world has, then you make it hard for us to drive a standard.

Bottom line is, even if we could get used to the whole left-hand thing, everything's backwards. The stick, the driver's seat is on the wrong side and even if I'm saving R90, I'd like to think my life is worth more than that. I've already seen two wrecks (one, a car was stopped at a red light and this truck just came crashing into him) and heard from a friend about a motorcycle crash. That's my least favorite sound in the world (followed closely by anything Rammstein).