How to drive like a tightrope walker

[dismallyoriented]

One of the things that roommate has been doing to try and build more life skills and independence is learning how to drive. So far it's been mostly practice with me, as I've had an extended period of unemployment and therefore had time to take them out during the week in the car. We'll be moving them toward private driving lessons, as I'll be starting a new job soon, and eventually my wife and I are planning to head to Canada in the next year or two, so a more structured and focused Life Improvement Scheme is going to be necessary to best prepare them for once they have to go elsewhere.

During one of our recent practice sessions, I had pitched a specific neighborhood that would be a good practice ground, and specifically pitched trying to drive there, as it's a very short ways from where we live. They were nervous about it, because the main road off of our neighborhood is a two-lane county route, which can be understandably intimidating. I was the same with my own learning experience back in my hometown. So I drove us to the practice zone, but on the way there I pointed out the relatively low oncoming traffic for the turn. And on the way back after practicing for a decent chunk with single lane residential roads, I had a small lightbulb moment.

Those of you who knew me from cohost may remember the post I made about "the circus faction in your trpg setting". The short version is I watched a video where an experienced circus performer taught a youtuber how to walk tightrope, and I was so impressed by the teacher's physical and mental fortitude that I wrote up a post on how to incorporate those aspects of circus life into characters who have that as part of their background. One of the pieces of advice that he gave was, to paraphrase, "It's the same trick 5 inches off the ground as it is 50 ft off the ground."

Which is to say: if you can keep your balance on the rope the whole time under perfectly safe conditions, then you have the minimum physical skill you need to do the same thing under riskier and more dangerous conditions. You are \*already* capable, you just have to keep your head during the dangerous conditions. The same goes for keeping a car under control on a one lane road. If you can stay in your lane on a one-lane road, you can do the same thing on a multi-lane road, once you know how to keep your cool. Good life advice that I'm gonna try to remember for lots of things, tbh.

Comments

[lb_lee]

Man, do I remember practicing driving in a big ol' stadium parking lot. Driving in reverse was the WORST.

I admit to being a little envious of getting to move to Canada. We hope y'all have a good time there (and also stick around on DW because we like your posts).

[dismallyoriented]

Yeah - it was always on the cards simply because wife and I wanted to cohabit with our third partnersys eventually, and with their medical situation it made more sense for everyone to relocate to there. Recent events got my wife scared enough to start putting things into motion for serious. It's a lot of mixed emotions because even as we are keen to leave the current regime and get a new life phase started with our partner, we have a good thing going here, where we are now, and like. It hurts to uproot from a place you like and care about, and we don't feel great about leaving when others can't. It feels like desertion and I wish we could stay for longer, if only so our roommate had more time to more firmly get their feet under themselves. Breaking the news is not going to be fun and I don't want them to collapse so completely that they give up on their life circumstances and lose the progress they've made so far.

But I'm not gonna force my wife to stay longer when she's terrified, and I imagine it's going to take a kind of long-ass time to make it happen, in terms of securing work or a student visa if either of us take the Grad Student route. So we gotta get started figuring out logistics now, in case it takes a couple of tries before we can actually make things happen. We'll be getting roommate hooked up with local disability support services so they have external support building independence skills, and hopefully people from the local trans community that they've been building connections with will be able to help them find a good place to land within the area.

Regardless though, I definitely plan on hanging around on DW. I'm a poster at heart and I've somehow been managing to keep up with a decent monthly rate. Happy to keep writing so long as people enjoy reading.

[lb_lee]

Yeah, no y’all are being smart planning ahead, immigration surely takes ages. Even our temporary working holiday visa a long time ago took some time for sure.

Whereabouts in Canada are y’all looking at?

[dismallyoriented]

Nova Scotia - it's where Canadian partnersys lives right now, and it's also the east coast. Both parts of which are geographically important to me. I'm a marine biologist by training, so that province is a good place for fisheries work, *and* as a Jersey boy I'm pretty attached to this coastline overall. I've opted not to do west coast stuff even though there's plenty of good marine science over there and there's plenty of reasons to like it there. I just am from the east coast and want to stay along it. Our target is gonna be Halifax, bc we've already done the rural living stint between all three* of us and a city like that seems the better option.

[lb_lee]

Mori: One of my favorite authors lived in Halifax a good while, so that's good enough for me!

Sneak: Marine biologist! @_@ Our parents were originally trained to be marine biologists, and we'd visit a marine institute almost every year. They had a marine life sanctuary for disabled turtles and stuff, I liked it.

[dismallyoriented]

Omg. I feel some kind of way for having that in common with them, but a profession's a profession. Yeah, I've worked in a lot of state university labs over the years; this new job I've got is going to be the first time I've ever worked a non-academic job since 2019. Have a lot of fondness for the waterways and institutions I've worked in, and it'll be interesting working a low level industry job for a while. And yes, whenever I go somewhere new, I try to visit the aquarium if possible. Animal nerds are predictable in this way

[lb_lee]

Sneak: ooh yes, I didn’t think of that. Sorry. <_< Neither of them went into that profession, if it helps! What sort of work will you be doing? Do you specialize in arthropods, fishies, algae? @_@

[dismallyoriented]

Haha, nah it's all good, genuinely. Like I said, a profession is just a profession and this was just a part of your life. I'm a shellfish guy, mostly by accident in that the first place that hired me out of undergrad was an oyster fisheries lab. I've continued doing oysters for a while, with a two year dip into scallop stuff, and now I'm back on an oyster farm as an interim job.

[lb_lee]

Sneak: Oysters and scallops are neat! They seem like noble beings to study. ^_^ Oysters weren't common in our part of Texas, but I remember the scallops! We always thought they looked like they had little bowties on their shells, very dapper.