Driving!!

After school today, I got into a driver's ed car to have driving lesson with driver's ed Fred. I had never driven before.
I got my permit last Friday. I was going to write a post about how terrible the DMV is, but since everybody knows what an awful place it is, I didn't think I needed to. After I got my permit, I called the driver's ed school that I had taken driver's ed from and asked if I could have some lessons to learn how to drive. Cindy, the other driver's ed teacher, said that I should start out with driver's ed Fred and not with my parents so  I wouldn't learn any bad habits.
I told driver's ed Fred that I hadn't driven before, so he took me up to Highland Park. Highland Park has a one way road that just goes around in a circle around the park. It was actually a really nice place to start out.
I started out going what Fred called "grandma speed," which was about five miles an hour in a twenty five mile an our zone. Thankfully, there weren't that many cars around, so I wasn't causing traffic or anything. The thing is, "grandma speed" actually looks like you're going really fast if you're just looking forward, and then you look to the side and realize you could probably walk faster than you're going right now.
After a few laps around the park, I was starting to get the hang of it, and I was going at around twenty miles an hour. We stopped and talked about the steering wheel and the hand-over-hand technique, and we continued on. Another two laps later, driver's ed Fred asked if I wanted to go out into traffic.
This was a terrifying aspect to me. I was driving pretty well in a two lane, one way street, with minimal traffic, and a few dog walkers. But going out into traffic..... That means there's more people, way more cars, and those drivers who think it's a good idea to tailgate a driver's ed vehicle. But I figured that I would have to go out there sometime, and there was no better time than with an instructor, so, I said yes.
Normal traffic seems like a very crowded place. There are cars everywhere. I don't think the regular drivers who have been driving a while realize how many cars there are. There were those times when I would get that feeling. I would ask myself if I was really driving an actual vehicle or if I was really just sitting at home playing Mario Kart. Though, I have to say, I'm a pro at Mario Kart. When I look back on this in the future, I'll laugh at myself because by then, hopefully, driving will be a piece of cake.
But, I think I'm missing the point I'm trying to make. I DROVE HOME!!!! I drove 5.5 miles (I looked it up on Google maps) without crashing or killing anyone!!! Within an hour and a half, I was driving!!! Actually driving!!! And I went up to 35 miles an hour.