My lack of drive

Car driving. Never bothered learning how. I grew up in a working class neighborhood without a family car. None of my relatives had a car. Don't know if any of the neighbors in my apartment building had cars. None that I knew of. Living in Brooklyn we got around by subway and bus and on special occasions (coming home from foot surgery) took a taxi. There was no driver's education in my high school and in later years never had the motivation to take lessons. In my usual day-to-day dealings with other denizens of the Big Apple it doesn't usually cause much stir if I mention that I don't drive. In the course of my job I ask people to show me some form of ID and though the most frequent is a driver's license, state ID cards (non-driver IDs) are shown almost as often, as well as passports, resident alien cards and employee IDs. So in New York I'm not a weirdo.

But travel outside the five boroughs and I suddenly become a freak of nature. I recently attended a Gilbert & Sullivan Festival in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania and discovered it is not accessible by public transportation. There is no direct train service to this historic town. Closest rail stops are in Harrisburg or Baltimore. And there are no buses there to take you to Gettysburg; you have to arrange to be driven. This situation was discussed on Savoynet, the online G&S group and one of the writers, a driver from Connecticut referred to someone who had "admitted he/she does not drive". Of course she was referring to me. Very considerate of her to shield my identity with the ambiguous "he/she", unless she (there, at least I'm being specific!) isn't sure of my gender. Curious choice of verbs; why not "mentioned" or "stated" or even plain old "said"? "Admitted" gives the connotation of confessing to some shameful secret, like preferring Andrew Lloyd Webber to G&S.

So I was inspired to do a little survey. The population I queried was the Lefferts 1969 Clubhouse group on Facebook. Members are classmates and friends of classmates of mine who grew up in the same area in Brooklyn and attended the same schools I did. A rather small sample, only sixteen members, and only nine responded, so the results may be faulty. The questions I posed were:

1. Did your family have a car when you were a child?

2. When (if ever) did you learn to drive?

3. Do you currently live where driving is necessary to get around?

The results showed I'm still a bit of a weirdo after all. I'm the only one who never learned to drive. For #1 there were four whose families never had a car. For #2, three learned in their teens (from car owning families), five in their 20s, and one at over 30. But most of the responders said they live in places where they do need a car to get around. Two said a car was not necessary, but was helpful. Only one lives in New York City, and he/she (I can be coy, too!) lives in Staten Island, which to the other four boroughs, doesn't really count.

The most interesting comment was from Amy Friedman:

"Driving is an odd activity - both meditative and demanding tremendous concentration. Kinda like video games."

The Savoynet motorist recently mentioned driving six hours to attend a gathering in Baltimore. To me that seems incredible. To spend such a long time in a vehicle seems bad enough. At least on a train, one could read or nap. But to spend that time actively engaged in operating the vehicle seems a terrible waste of time and effort. I'll stick with the train. And if it's not going there, neither am I.