DRIVING LESSON

Driving with a friend of the opposite sex can be a challenge. If you are male, chances are your male friend won’t say a word when you force forward a zigzag path along a crowded road, but rest assured a female friend would scream a violent protest. The opposite also applies. Being a female of the species, I’m constantly under the scrutiny of male friends when it comes to driving.

None of my female friends says anything about my careful and methodically correct (read: super-slow) way of driving. They also have no objection on the way I always keep my hands precisely at the 12:45 clock position on the steering wheel. I have one more habit that my male friends find so disturbing: I only overtake other cars after very careful calculation, and most of the time I keep to my lane. No zig-zagging necessary, for I always take the right lane and I am patient enough not to change lane every time my lane got jammed.

I am so used to protests coming from male friends, most of which I don’t even pay attention to. But one of such protests still sticks in my mind more than 7 years since the first time I heard it. It was said by a male friend (well of course) upon noticing the way I tried to change lane (which was, and still is: 1. put my blinker on 2.look carefully where to go 3.come to a full, or near-full stop 4.wait patiently until the other car gives way).
This method is safe; yet doing it in Jakarta takes time and a patience level more than the normal human beings have.

After clicking his tongue impatiently, observing that none of the others drivers were willing to let me pass, he said in a nice tone: “Why don’t you roll your window all the way down, and show the world that you are a woman?”


Whydontchajustdropdead.

That was what I think. What on earth does being a female have to do with trying to change lane in a crowded Jakarta road? I never had the slightest thought to exploit my sex to get my way ahead of others. In all aspects of life. Yikes.

But something in me begged to try his advice. So I rolled down my window, and voila. One driver stopped and let me pass. Oh oh.

Now if only that dreadful selection committee will look at my papers and say: “Let’s take her in. She’s female.”

Fat chance.