Driving To Fail

Laughing is defined as a spontaneous sound or noise that stems from amusement. The time when I had an ability to laugh at a failure was when I failed my first try on my driving test. The reason why I say I was able to laugh at this was because the whole way there I knew I would fail it. I just had a feeling of it almost like this feeling had jinxed the outcome of my test.

The first mistake happens once the driving instructor got in the car with me, I became very intimidated by his uniform. The uniform looked almost like a police officer uniform, his posture is up straight and the way I could tell that was because he is a very muscular and tall. Here I am a 5’1 sixteen year old weighing only 115 pounds, my point is that I am very small and he was not which made me extra nervous. I was questioning everything I was doing, where I put a piece of paper he had handed me and whether I was competent to even be in the driving seat.

Why I had been feeling that way I like to believe it was the first time jitters but yet I felt like a different person. The way I felt different was because I was sweaty, every muscle in my body was spasming up, I got an instant migraine I was a wreck. It is hard to focus being in a state of mind like that, I had to be more confident and collected to have a chance of passing. I had been instructed me to turn right out of my parking spot in the D.M.V. parking lot, and I turned my blinker on for left that was fail number one.

As we were driving onto a road that veried onto another road there was a sign that I thought was a yield sign turns out, it was a stop sign and almost got us into an accident due to a car coming down my right side going fourty-five where I had pulled out, even after that he still instructed me to drive. When I was at an intersection I had to turn left and I did, but I turned on to the outside lane not one closest to me, mistake number three. Once we got back the instructor told me I had failed, I told him, “Thank you for your time.” I then went inside to tell my mom.

Once I told her you could see immediate sympathy in her eyes and that came to confusion to her after I laughed about failing. She asked me why I am laughing and I told her “It was small things that didn’t go well this ended up being a big failure, I can’t let it get to me. I need to laugh it off and learn from it and come back to pass.” When I came back I had passed and it is simply because I laughed it off the first time and learned from what I did. I learned that not every setback has to be taken to heart but can be taken as a grain of salt to be learned from, laughter is a good thing in life. With laughter being prominent in times of failure there tends to be a sense of relieve in such a tense moment. With this relieve people can be able to learn from these failures or setbacks rather than dwell in them.

What I learned from my setback in my driving test after I laughed about it was that I let my mind get the best of me, and from that I learned to be more confident when driving and to control my anxiety when driving. When I had gone back the snow was a nor’easter and regardless of that I still was confident and kept my anxiety down alot. This allowed a more clear mind to drive under such harsh conditions, as a result, I passed my test with flying colors in only ten minutes! I learned a lesson after this by learning it’s okay to laugh when something gets you down, this allows growth and opportunities.

Photo on Foter.com