KELLY

I have been my own worst enemy for a while. For reasons I will keep to myself, I lost my temper recently during my driving test. Didn't have to lose it, but I did! For something that is already a strenuous exercise, keeping your cool would have been the recommended medicine, right?

Aah, but this is me we're talking, Mr Self-Destruct. The written test was fine (at least I can read, right?).

But it's my nature to implode, especially when I'm dealing with somebody who seems quite unpleasant (like the examiner).

So I, now mentally out of it, wreck the reversing (which always gave me trouble, to be fair) and subsequently failed the parking (the one thing I thought I would actually pass). So there I was, my day, at about 10: 30 a.m., totally 'mash up'.

My instructor tried, in vain, to console me. I waited to receive a new date for the test and felt like a prisoner waiting for his lunch. Felt everyone's eyes in my back. I felt stupid; shoulders hunched, mind cluttered like the Riverton dump.

Can't drive

I had to run a few errands so my instructor dropped me off near enough to where I was going and I simply trod the rest of the way. As I walked along the road, half hoping that one of the cars zooming by might do me a favour and whack me to the great beyond, I stumbled over some loose stones. That's it, I realised! Of course you can't drive; you can't even walk properly! That explains it right there!

For the rest of that day, and I think the rest of that week, I felt like chewed out bubble gum on the sole of someone's shoe. I never thought about killing myself (let me hasten to point out), but even if I did, I probably wouldn't have tied the noose properly. Gun to my head? Probably would have missed! Slit wrists? Might miss the vein!

Yeah right!

My only hope is that nobody else takes failure as badly as I do because it may make you afraid to try. And if you're afraid to try, you may be afraid to live in general. And that's a bigger fear than lizards, heights or any other phobia. (And here I thought I feared heights. Yeah right!)

So I'm due to go back and try again. I will, but only (and I mean ONLY) because I can't look myself in the mirror if I just pay for the licence. Imagine that! I have scruples! All I need now are brains! Later.

Don't try to console me at daviot.kelly@gleanerjm.com