My Driving Instructor Gave Me His Keys — And I Taught the Worst Driver I’ve Ever Met

I signed up for driving school in the spring of my senior year.

There was one right across from my dorm: 2,200 yuan, not including retake fees. I went to check it out once. A few plane trees grew along the edge of the lot, and under their shade seven or eight people were squatting, some smoking, some scrolling through short videos. A training car crept slowly across the ground, stuffed with four students. The one in the driver's seat was wrestling with the wheel in a fluster; the other three waited in the back. I counted over the course of a morning. Each person got about three turns. Each turn lasted less than ten minutes.

The school I ended up choosing was on the west side of the city. 4,800 yuan, one-on-one appointment-based, all exam fees included. That meant every week I had to ride my mountain bike from the east gate of campus, cut across two main roads, and pedal forty minutes to get there. My roommate said, "You're insane. There's one right across the street, and you're going all the way out there?" I said, do the math. That place across the street is 2,200, no retake fees included. If you fail the second test, that's 600 extra. Fail the third, 800 more. Most people fail at least one. Here, 4,800 covers everything: no waiting in line, and for every one-hour session, the wheel is yours the whole time. Over there, three months is fast. Here, one month. This last month before graduation is gold. The time I save is enough to rerun my final-year project data twice.

My roommate didn't say anything else. He went back to his game.

The instructor's surname was Zhou. He was in his fifties, thin, with a face that gave nothing away. On the first day he drove me around the lot once, pointed out the clutch, the brake, the gas, then switched me into the driver's seat. Somehow I managed to get the car moving without stalling. He glanced at my feet, then after that he rarely spoke.

The main trouble came on the second or third session. That day he told me to move the car to the other side of the lot. He lifted his chin in that direction and said, "Over there." I followed his gaze and saw three reversing bays. I picked the middle one and started turning the wheel. From the passenger seat came a short, sharp "Tch."

I ignored it and kept backing up. Once the car was straight, he spoke again, not loud, but with a tone that sounded like decades of accumulated impatience: "Over there. Where are your eyes looking?"

I stepped on the brake and turned my head. I said, "Instructor, just tell me which bay number. Don't worry about which route I take to get there. I can drive it myself."

He didn't answer. Two seconds, maybe three. That kind of silence is rare in a driving-school passenger seat. Most instructors don't go silent. They cover your words with louder sighs or even vaguer pointing. But he didn't. He glanced at the rearview mirror, then at me, and said, "Bay Three."

After that, he only gave me numbers.

"Bay Two." "Bay Five." "Bay One's empty. Take Bay One."

I weaved the car between those posts like a worker ant. When no one was waiting behind me, I'd take an extra couple of laps. When someone showed up, I'd yield. I progressed faster than I'd expected. By day four I didn't need to memorize the reference points for the second test anymore. My body remembered them on its own: when to turn, when to straighten out, at what angle between the yellow line in the mirror and the car body I should hit the brake.

Another week passed, and the instructor started having me help with new students.

The first time he tossed me the keys, I was drinking water. He said, "Take a look at that girl for me," then got out, lit a cigarette, and stood twenty meters away under a tree. I screwed the cap back on my bottle, slid into the passenger seat, and pulled it forward a little. The previous student must have been short; my legs wouldn't straighten out.

The girl's first words upon getting in were, "Ah, where's Instructor Zhou?" I said he went for a smoke; I'll do just as well. She said, "Oh," and didn't speak again.

If my teaching style was an instruction manual, hers was a song playing on shuffle. On the reversing maneuver, she could repeat the same mistake twenty times without a single variation. Every time she turned the wheel from the same angle, every time she hit the yellow line at the same spot. When the rear tire rolled over that painted line, the car would jolt slightly. The line was raised and grainy, and the tire made a low, muffled hum as it crossed.

I said, watch the mirror; straighten the wheel when the car is parallel. She stared straight ahead. I said, put it in reverse, turn the wheel left one full rotation. She turned it to the right. I got out, crouched behind the trunk, and used my hands to show her the angle. She nodded, then when she put it in reverse, she shifted into drive instead.

I got back in the passenger seat and pulled the seatbelt across, clicking it in place.

In that hour she must have attempted it over thirty times. Not a single successful one. Not close, way off. The steering wheel in her hands was like a compass thrown into a washing machine. It spun, but you had no idea which way it was pointing.

By the fortieth minute I had stopped talking. I watched the mirror, watched that yellow line, watched her run over it from the same direction again and again. Now and then she'd glance sideways at me. That look didn't say What am I doing wrong. It said Why isn't this over yet.

At the fifty-minute mark she checked her watch. Not by rolling up her sleeve. She used her right thumb to push the watchband aside on her left wrist, looked down, then looked up. She said, "Oh, time's up. I've got to go."

I said, no one's booked after you, and you haven't got it in even once. Don't you want to practice a bit more?

She was already unbuckling. The buckle popped open with a sharp click. She said, "Next time, I guess. I'm not feeling it today."

"When's your next session?"

She got out with her backpack on and said, "I'll check the schedule when I get back." Then she walked off. There was a little plush rabbit keychain hanging from her bag, white, bobbing with each step. I stayed in the passenger seat, engine still running, still in reverse, the air conditioning blowing cold air straight at my face.

I never saw her again.

I don't know if she ever got her license. That thought surfaces now and then, usually in traffic. Evening rush hour, the off-ramp under the overpass, three lanes merging into two. I signal right and wait for the car next to me to give up half a lane. Then I wonder: if she's driving, if she's in the lane beside me, how would she merge? Would she signal early and wait for someone to let her in? Or would she just yank the wheel and force her way through?

A honk from the car behind me in the mirror pulls me back. I realize the white car ahead has already pulled three or four car lengths forward.

I ease off the brake and follow. The turn signal is still on, ticking: tick-tick-tick-tick.