Now we’re back to the final drive. I’ve already told you all about the practice for the final drive and am now onto the actual final drive. If you have read any of my earlier entries you would already know that I received a negative four on this drive and am now stuck driving with the DOT. Just a quick recap for my neglectful readers who have forgotten (or not read any of my blogs prior to this), I was driver two driving the second portion of a planned route that you were required to memorize and execute that began with parallel parking and ended back at Kennedy. Points were deducted in increments of five and you were not allowed to ask for help. By now I’m sure everyone has created a not so flattering opinion of my capabilities as a driver so you all hear the words parallel park and are all probably expecting some comical story of a disastrous blunder made attempting to parallel park. For those of you that fall into this category I pleased to say I must disappoint you. I did perfectly average on my parking job. An over achiever the word average is unacceptable but if you are like me you learn to accept you insufficiencies and accept a C as opposed to a lesser grade. Now that were back on topic we’ll pick up after my semi successful parallel parking. I began my route smoothly I hit all my turns obeyed the traffic laws and was beginning to calm down slightly (from psyching myself out before the drive) when I accidently missed my turnoff. I automatically got five points deducted right then but even worse than that I immediately began freaking out and over analyzing everything. Once I was off course became severely disoriented and couldn’t think clearly. Mr. Tilden had to give me step by step directions to get back on course which deducted an additional five points leaving me with only five left making it an automatic fail and a obligated drive with the DOT. But on with the story Mr. Tilden was guiding me to an exit that would bring me back on course which I promptly missed and had to be given extra instructions to the next nearest point where I could get back on track. Back where I was supposed to be I was stopped about to turn left at a light that required me to drive over a cross walk which is perfectly acceptable given there is no one crossing at the time. Unfortunately for me there was someone crossing at the time and even worse luck they were and idiot. It is here that I almost committed murder and that idiot I didn’t run over should thank there lucky stars the Mr. Tilden has an emergency brake on his side. Here’s how it happened, I was half way through my turn when the person started crossing (I’m going to say it was a guy for simplicities sake.) So I stop to let him go. Seeing me stop he quickly steps back onto the curb to let me go. I think this is nice of him and begin to slowly finish my turn. Then the stupid pedestrian decides that he doesn’t want to wait for me to finish the turn and starts crossing. I immediately stop but as soon as I stop so does he and he steps back towards the curb not completely on it. Other cars are starting to get frustrated with us so I take a chance and decide he want me to pass. This time I start going quicker to just get my turn done with but it seems the pedestrian was thinking the same thing. We both start moving at the same time at a faster speed. This would’ve been very bad if Mr. Tilden hadn’t slammed on his emergency brake just then I don’t like to think what would’ve happened. To quote Mr. Tilden his exact word were “What were you thinking Ashley?!Could you not see the person?!!”. The way this is written out it sounds like this was a time consuming exchange but in reality that entire ordeal was in less than three minutes. From here I try to salvage what is left of my drive and manage to get back to Kennedy only getting off course one more time. If you read all this and actually bother to add up all my points or rather deductions seeing as I had no points left you would see that Mr. Tilden was a very gracious grader.