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Q. Does your husband allow you to drive alone?
A. You … you’re kidding, right?
I’ve been driving longer than some of my partners have been alive. I’ve been driving since before I could actually see over the dashboard and needed a booster seat. I’ve been driving a manual transmission since I could physically move the gear shift.
I used to race cars. I learned how to drive on a 1979 4x4 Landcruiser in the Sierra mountains on one-lane tracks with a mountain on one side and a cliff on the other. I learned how to drive in the snow, on rocky beaches, and in swamps.
Hunting as a child with my father, he decided that, in case of an emergency while the two of us were out in the middle of nowhere, far away from civilization, if he was ever incapacitated, I would need to know how to wrestle him up into the truck and how to drive that truck to safety or help. So he taught me how to drive when I was so small, that I needed a stand to hold the barrel of the shotgun I used to kill animals because I simply didn’t have the arm length or body weight for leverage.
A. You … you’re kidding, right?
I’ve been driving longer than some of my partners have been alive. I’ve been driving since before I could actually see over the dashboard and needed a booster seat. I’ve been driving a manual transmission since I could physically move the gear shift.
I used to race cars. I learned how to drive on a 1979 4x4 Landcruiser in the Sierra mountains on one-lane tracks with a mountain on one side and a cliff on the other. I learned how to drive in the snow, on rocky beaches, and in swamps.
Hunting as a child with my father, he decided that, in case of an emergency while the two of us were out in the middle of nowhere, far away from civilization, if he was ever incapacitated, I would need to know how to wrestle him up into the truck and how to drive that truck to safety or help. So he taught me how to drive when I was so small, that I needed a stand to hold the barrel of the shotgun I used to kill animals because I simply didn’t have the arm length or body weight for leverage.
(yes, I know I’m not holding the gun properly here - see aforementioned necessary stand; since I didn’t have the stand set up, I didn’t have the leverage to hold it for the picture, so I merely posed for the camera because I wasn’t actually firing it at the time)
I also drive a forklift and a high reach / boomlift (with an OSHA certification to go with both). I can drive better than every partner I’ve ever had, with the possible exception of the guy who taught me how to ride a motorcycle. Hell, I’ve even taught *some of them* how to drive things.
When I was 23 years old, I bought a 40-foot school bus, drove it down the Pacific Coast from the Canadian border, converted it to a motorhome, and then drove it (with a vehicle towed behind it) across the Southern United States.
By myself.
(ok, with my cat)
In addition to that, I am a fully functioning, legally recognized, autonomous human being. I have not needed anyone to “allow” me to do anything in decades.
Muffin, if you think any partner is even capable of “allowing” me or not “allowing” me to do *anything*, let alone something I’m really fucking good at and probably better than they are, then perhaps someone else needs to be in charge of “allowing” you out in public without supervision.
