Learning to Drive

I’m a driver. Not in the sense that I drive people around for a living, I just enjoy driving a lot. I guess I could’ve initially said “I enjoy driving a lot.” It’s hard for me to think of times when I didn’t have my license and had to be chauffeured around by a parent. That’s no way to live life.

To get to the point I’m at now, I had to go through driving school TWICE. I don’t think my mom trusted that I would be a good driver right away. Probably because of the time that I pulled onto a main road without stopping, while cars were approaching in both directions.

I didn’t drive with my mom much after that. I think I eventually forced my dad to risk his life and drive with me. I pretty much drove in circles and made him listen to the Chicago soundtrack with me. He had it comin’, he had it comin’, he only had himself to blame….if you’d have been there, if you’d have seen it, I betcha you would’ve done the same!

And all that jazz.

See, I get talked into taking classes easily. I remember freshman year of high school, I was 15 years old before most of the people in my year. My friend told me that I should take Driver’s Ed through the school with her since I was old enough to get my learner’s permit. I got my permit, and the next semester, I was in class with her. My teacher was super old and annoying and always talked about how good his break reaction speed was. Like, who cares?

The best part of the class is that we got to leave school. Driving around was fine, but leaving school was an amazing feeling. In that class I earned the name Lead-foot Lily (It was actually my last name, but Lily sounds better. Don’t you hate when teacher’s refer to you as your last name like you’re in the army or something? ) because, you can guess,  I was into going fast and breaking hard.

Do you think the guy that’s driving is nervous because he’s driving without a license plate?

After I was done with that class, my mom enrolled me in a driving class outside of school. My teacher’s name was Mr. Wickersham and he would drive up to my house and I would get in the car and drive around with him and pick up other kids who wanted to die. Wickersham was old and boring. He didn’t give me a cool nickname, but on my sixteenth birthday he took me through the McDonald’s drive thru and bought me a Sausage McMuffin. So he definitely had some credibility.

I waited a month after my birthday to get my license. I was nervous. Everyone at school liked to tell horror stories of which DMV was the worst and which ones made you parallel park and which ones made you pull out into oncoming traffic. I was a pro at pulling out into oncoming traffic so I picked that one. Everything went smoothly and I almost hugged the guy that was testing me when he said, “Alright, you passed.” I even opened the door for him we we went back inside.

Ever since then, I’ve been a driving machine. Lead-foot or not, I like to drive around, listen to tunes, and sing by myself. It soothes me. It’s a new form of freedom when you’re sixteen. You can just get up and go whenever you want. Unless you don’t have a car. Then nothing really changes.

Taken 2 aka LOL

I usually trust my mom’s movie advice. She and I seem to have similar taste in films. Last week she had seen Taken 2 and enjoyed it. I couldn’t help remembering how convenient things were in the first Taken movie. Liam Neeson finds his daughter who is lost in the underground Parisian sex slave trade. There is no way that would happen in real life. I don’t care who your dad is. Side note: I remember I was told not to go to Paris after this movie came out.

I just want to address some comedic highlights in Taken 2 so none of you have to spend your money on this (unless you want a good laugh). The first 30 minutes is pure cheese. Like, the cheesiest cheese you could imagine. It was bad acting. And this is coming from the girl who forgot her lines in a play and ran off stage crying.

In the beginning of the movie we learn that Liam Neeson’s (I’m not referring to him as his character because he’ll always just be Liam Neeson to me)  daughter, Kim is just trying to live a normal life after her dad saved her from being sexed up by crazy Turks. Is that PC? She’s dating some loser named Jamie and taking driving lessons from her dad. Sounds fun.

Kim and her mom surprise Liam Neeson in Turkey while he’s there on some Turkish business. I don’t know why they had the urge to go to Turkey, but okay. One part that actually made me laugh out loud (along with the rest of the audience) was when Liam Neeson called his daughter and told her, “I don’t want you to panic, but your mom and I are going to be taken.” See if I were Kim, I would’ve been like, “Geeze Dad you’re so embarrassing!” But instead she just starts crying. Weird.

Dad, I’m trying to relax. Get to the point.

Liam happens to have this sweet mini phone that’s never been invented. Maybe he had an in with dead Steve Jobs or something. Anything goes in this movie. He talks to his daughter and walks her through how to save them. He basically tells her to go in the closet and find his grenade stash and throw the grenades everywhere in the city so that he could hear them to figure out his location. Kim pretty much destroys Istanbul doing so.

The movie continued on and the entire time I was hoping that Liam and his clan would either die or get arrested and rot in Turkish prison. Liam lets Kim drive in a getaway scene which is actually the most exciting part of the entire movie. She didn’t have her license, and you sure could tell! Damn Kim messed up Istanbul real bad. She honestly should’ve gone to jail.

Kim trying to drive while her father shoots people.

And then, to wrap it up, Liam ends up escaping with his bad fighting moves. Couldn’t they have afforded a stunt double for this guy? Everything ultimately works out and the movie ends with the family, safe at home, going out for milkshakes. With Jamie.

I wish I was kidding.