Topic Talk | Why Xochitl Never Learned to Drive

In this episode of The A to Z English Podcast, Jack asks Xochitl why she never learned to drive.

Transcript:

00:00:01

Jack

Welcome to the A-Z English podcast. My name is Jack and I’m here with my co-host social. And today we are going to do a topic talk episode and the episode is why social never learned to drive so social, why didn’t you ever learn to drive?

00:00:19

Xochitl

Jack, this is actually a really interesting thing that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately because I still haven’t learned to drive. Answer those who are not familiar with American culture, getting their license was a main staple of American culture up until.

00:00:34

Jack

MHM.

00:00:35

Xochitl

Around my generation.

00:00:39

Xochitl

Right, so people who are like denzi, millennial cuspers or genzi or very, very young millennials, like still in their 20s can all kind of relate to this. There’s a shift. There was a shift in the culture and everyone.

00:00:57

Xochitl

It was so much less common to get your license.

00:01:01

Xochitl

Versus it used to be that everyone got their license as soon as they could, because that kind of meant freedom. And I Jack, you can speak more to that than I can.

00:01:09

Jack

Yeah, like your 16th birthday is a huge landmark in a young man’s. Ohh. And and and and for young women too. In in, in my generation I’m 47 now. When I turned 16, I was like the next day I was at the the Department of Motor Vehicles.

00:01:30

Jack

Taking my my drivers test, you know to get my license because.

00:01:35

Jack

I wanted to borrow my dad’s car and go places with my friends and it was like a whole world just opened up.

00:01:44

Jack

For me.

00:01:46

Jack

And yeah.

00:01:46

Xochitl

Yeah, crazy. Go ahead. Go ahead, Jack.

00:01:48

Jack

Yeah, that’s it basically. I mean, you’re, you’re you, you, you, you, you know, you can only walk so far, ride a bike so far.

00:01:57

Jack

And also it’s embarrassing. It was kind of, we’ll say, cringy to ride a bike after 16 in in America, which nowadays every people love their.

00:02:06

발표자

Right.

00:02:10

Jack

You know, so that’s that’s that’s changed too. But yeah, when you turned 16 in America, when you turn 16 in America, you are old enough to drive, which is crazy to me because we can’t drink till you’re 21 and you can join the military when you’re 18. But.

00:02:30

Jack

It’s it’s very strange.

00:02:31

Xochitl

If that I like to think.

00:02:32

Jack

Yeah, you can go fight and die in a war, but you can’t have a a beer, you know, it’s.

00:02:38

Xochitl

You can even drive.

00:02:39

Xochitl

At 14, in some states like Iowa.

00:02:41

Jack

Yeah, there’s, I guess some are really young. I mean, my daughter’s 15. So she’s old enough to get her learner’s permit, which means she could drive if I’m in the car with her.

00:02:53

Xochitl

Right, which is busy.

00:02:53

Jack

Uh.

00:02:54

Jack

But she lives near Miami in the South of Florida. I would never let her drive in a million years down there. It’s a it’s a hot mess down there. It’s crazy.

00:03:01

발표자

Thanks.

00:03:05

Xochitl

Yeah. Dallas. Yeah, I I think the reason the main reasons I didn’t get my license was a couple things. One, I had to stay at home, Mom.

00:03:16

Xochitl

Which meant she could kind of give me rides to school most.

00:03:20

Xochitl

Or from school most days and I took the bus. Other than that, I think I mostly I took the bus to school so they do. You do? Consider it lame, I guess after a certain age to take the bus to school, but I really.

00:03:33

Xochitl

Didn’t.

00:03:33

Xochitl

Care about that. So I would just think, yeah.

00:03:37

Jack

Yeah.

00:03:38

Jack

That, that, that separates you from the the fact that you don’t. You didn’t care is really cool. Actually, I find that that cool. You’re like what? I don’t care what people think about me. Like, whatever. You know, it’s a mature attitude.

00:03:50

Xochitl

Yeah, I lived there.

00:03:54

Xochitl

Yeah. So, so that was one thing. So I would just take the bus. And two, we only had one car, so the whole family. So my dad would ride his bike to work, and most days cause his job wasn’t too far. And he liked riding his bike to.

00:04:11

Xochitl

Stay in shape.

00:04:12

Xochitl

And my mom had the car kind of at home, so whatever.

00:04:15

Xochitl

Like in case you need to come pick us up in an emergency or we got sick or whatever. So she was a stay at home Mom. So most of the time until I hit my senior year of.

00:04:24

Xochitl

The school. And so when I hit my senior year of high school, she got a a job outside the home and then she would sometimes drive to work. But other times she would walk. So our family was really big on, like, environmental footprint, which for our listeners who don’t know, it’s like your.

00:04:44

Xochitl

Impact on the environment and being like.

00:04:47

Xochitl

Ecologically friendly and all that stuff. So like my parents were kind of hippies in that sense.

00:04:51

Xochitl

Before it was.

00:04:52

Xochitl

Cool and and because of that, that was another reason that.

00:04:52

발표자

Hello.

00:05:03

Xochitl

That I didn’t put that much focus on driving, I think.

00:05:06

Jack

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You kind of. You know, if if it’s really important to your if your dad’s, like, mechanically inclined and, you know, into cars, you you might be more.

00:05:19

Jack

UM.

00:05:21

Jack

Determined to to want to drive, you know.

00:05:25

Xochitl

Well, actually, my dad was.

00:05:27

Xochitl

Really mechanically inclined, like he had this old car before he got married to my mom and he would spend all his time fixing up on it and he had like all these expensive tools, but he would just also kind of a like a hippie or an original hipster.

00:05:39

Xochitl

They cared a lot about, like his impact on the environment. Yeah, I would. That was probably the big driver behind one of the big.

00:05:46

Xochitl

Drivers.

00:05:47

Jack

That’s really cool.

00:05:47

Xochitl

And then.

00:05:49

Xochitl

Yeah, I went away to college when I was. I just turned 18. When I went to College in Grinnell, IA. And it’s a really small campus. And you live on campus, like all four years. So I didn’t need to drive anywhere at all because we would just be in town and.

00:06:03

Jack

Right.

00:06:09

Xochitl

Uh people don’t know sometimes, but College in the US, you can live in the dorms, which means that your classes are like a block away, and then the dining hall is also right there. If you live on campus, you have to have, like, a dining plan. So you eat all your meals in the dining hall. They’re prepared for you, and you just go in there and serve like.

00:06:16

Jack

Right.

00:06:28

Xochitl

Do for yourselves. So I didn’t need to go grocery shopping. There was like nothing I really needed to do.

00:06:36

Jack

Yeah. Then you kind of miss that window where you know, you go through drivers Ed in high school, you get ready for the test. You take the drivers test, you take the written test, you take the high test, and if you miss that window, it gets really awkward there. When you’re in your early 20s and you just never learned.

00:06:36

Xochitl

I yeah.

00:06:56

Jack

How to it’s kind of like never learning to swim. It’s kind of like people that miss that window when they don’t learn when they’re a kid.

00:06:59

Xochitl

Then.

00:07:03

Jack

And tend to kind of avoid water when they’re they’re older, they’re just like it’s too late for me to.

00:07:10

Jack

To learn this, so I guess I’m just not going to do this activity.

00:07:16

Xochitl

Yeah, cause I just got more and more like less and less important for me to have to drive. I like moved to Mexico for a little bit. I didn’t need to drive at all because you could walk everywhere or take public transport everywhere. And then I moved.

00:07:28

Jack

Yeah.

00:07:30

Xochitl

I finished college, so I took a gap year. I finished college and I was again I was in Grinnell again, so I didn’t have to go anywhere. Then out the gate from college, I worked at a law firm and my apartment was across the street. This was a coincidence. I ended up renting an apartment across the street from where I worked. So there’s a 2 minute walk and there’s a grocery store like.

00:07:47

Jack

Ohh, that’s awesome so lucky.

00:07:51

Xochitl

Another two minutes from me, so I also didn’t have to learn.

00:07:54

Xochitl

Then.

00:07:55

Xochitl

And then I moved to Korea.

00:07:58

Xochitl

And I use public transport to go everywhere.

00:08:01

Jack

Yeah, you don’t need a car in Korea. You that has a wonderful public transport.

00:08:05

Xochitl

Yeah. And then I moved back to Mexico and again, public transport is great and cheap, so I didn’t need to drive and now I I’m in the US and I’m like, oh, it would be great if I could drive because it’s such a pain to walk everywhere. But I.

00:08:21

Jack

Yeah, you live in the suburbs, man. You have to walk 5 miles to the grocery store. You know, the nearest Walmart or.

00:08:28

Jack

Something.

00:08:28

Xochitl

Yeah. So it’s kind of like, so I missed the window. But again, I think another thing that’s interesting for my generation is like we don’t really need to know how to drive that much because there’s so many ride sharing apps now like Uber.

00:08:41

Xochitl

And.

00:08:41

Xochitl

Lyft and things like that. So it sort of changed things. And the city that I live in, our public transport.

00:08:42

Jack

Yep.

00:08:49

Xochitl

System is 3 actually.

00:08:51

Xochitl

In Iowa City, so you can take the bus 3 anywhere, which kind of discourages you from having to drive.

00:09:00

Jack

Yeah. And if you don’t mind, you know, taking extra time on your trip. It’s it’s it’s OK. Like my generation. We’re so and it’s if I can’t get in my car and get there in 5 minutes, it’s it’s. I’m I’m. I’m whining. I’m frowning. You know, I’m like, oh, woe is me, you know, kind of attitude.

00:09:06

Xochitl

Yeah.

00:09:20

Jack

But it’s just because I’m so used to the convenience of just hopping in my car and just getting where I want to go immediately and.

00:09:21

Xochitl

Thanks.

00:09:29

Xochitl

So I think one thing that another thing that’s really interesting about all of this, Jack.

00:09:32

Xochitl

Is like that.

00:09:34

Xochitl

I wanted to ask you, since you do drive is.

00:09:39

Xochitl

I have all these reasons that make sense, but underneath all of that is that I also didn’t ever want to drive because I was. I had really bad anxiety about driving.

00:09:51

Jack

Hmm.

00:09:52

Xochitl

And I was scared, too scared to learn how to drive for years. And I’m not the only one. A lot of people in my generation view it this way like.

00:10:00

Xochitl

You’re in a metal contraption that goes crazy speeds on on the road with a bunch of other people and the same type of machine. It’s just like a recipe for disaster. It’s insane that it’s so easy to get your license and drive and everything.

00:10:16

Xochitl

And the reason that I think we all think this.

00:10:18

Xochitl

Way I was thinking a lot about it.

00:10:20

Xochitl

And there were these. There were these public service announcements they would play in, in middle schools and elementary schools and high schools for us. So my generation and they have like, don’t text while you drive or don’t do this while they drive. And they were just public safety announcements to stop.

00:10:40

Xochitl

Teenagers from doing reckless things while driving because you can drive before the age of 18 so they would play these in middle schools and high schools. The problem was it would depict these really horrible car crashes and people dying and like I’m pretty sure that traumatized. I think that may have traumatized.

00:10:52

Jack

Yes. Yeah.

00:10:59

Xochitl

My generation.

00:11:01

Jack

I think you.

00:11:02

Jack

They showed us those videos to you in drivers Ed and uh, you know, to to make us understand the the seriousness of what we were.

00:11:11

Jack

What we were doing and how you’re basically you’re, you’re driving a giant bullet around.

00:11:17

Jack

And if you hit someone you it will destroy your life. I mean you you could.

00:11:24

Jack

You could take a life very easily in a car and uh, I mean, you drive long enough. I’ve I had a a terrible accident, totaled my car on the freeway. I I I I wasn’t injured very badly, but I could have been killed very, very easily and.

00:11:43

Xochitl

I’ll sorry to ask you that random like.

00:11:45

Jack

Yeah, this this happened. Uh, maybe six or seven years ago on the Korean freeway. And if you know the Korean freeway, it’s people are driving, you know, a hundred 100 and.

00:11:48

발표자

Oh.

00:11:59

Jack

2200 and 3000 and 40 kilometers an hour and and I went.

00:12:06

Jack

Sideways across the traffic, 6 lanes of traffic backwards. It wasn’t my fault. I was hit by a truck and then I did a 360 and and smashed into the into a wall. Luckily it was backwards, so it wasn’t the front of my car that hit the.

00:12:26

Jack

Retaining wall, it was the back of my car, but then the fact that I didn’t get hit by other people who were flying you.

00:12:33

Jack

You know who are coming at that same time, it was just a. It was just a I was so lucky. I just. Just.

00:12:41

Xochitl

I’m a miracle, yeah.

00:12:42

Jack

It was a miracle that I didn’t get hurt or killed in that in that accident.

00:12:48

Xochitl

Was effective too.

00:12:50

Jack

What’s that?

00:12:52

Xochitl

Did the truck driver also survive this?

00:12:54

Jack

The truck driver didn’t even know that he hit me. I think he luckily pulled over and they found paint on the side of his truck that matched my paint. So he what happened was there was a truck that was, that was filled with too many things in it and the.

00:13:09

Jack

And blew it into my lane and he clipped my my front end or I’m sorry, my back end and caused me to start 360 and spinning around and and lose control of my car and go across 6 lanes of of freeway traffic.

00:13:30

Jack

At 6:30 in the morning in Korea, which is right before rush hour, and it was, it was a miracle. It was an absolute miracle that.

00:13:39

Xochitl

This is, uh, one of the reasons that I don’t even want to drive.

00:13:44

Jack

Yeah.

00:13:45

Xochitl

Well, I wanna ask you is is.

00:13:49

발표자

How?

00:13:49

Xochitl

Do you get back in your car every day after something like that happened?

00:13:54

Jack

Yeah, I mean, it was. Well, that car I never did get back in that car that they told that one off to the junkyard. No, but.

00:13:58

Xochitl

Right, right, right.

00:14:04

Jack

That’s a good question. You know, I I guess I just.

00:14:08

Jack

I think what I did was like compartmentalized the the situation. I kind of put that like situation in a box and pushed it far back in my brain somewhere where it was hit.

00:14:20

Jack

In a way.

00:14:21

Jack

And I knew that if I didn’t get back in the car and start driving again, I may never drive. So I just forced myself to.

00:14:31

Jack

Uh to to drive again and I was just extra extra careful for a long time. I did. And now I drive like a granny. You know, I used to be more aggressive, you know, and really impatient and get really angry. And then I now I really try to be Zen in my car and just be like, OK, someone wants to cut me off, let them go.

00:14:51

Jack

Just you know.

00:14:53

Jack

Just don’t be aggressive when you drive, be a defensive driver, not not an offensive driver. You have to be defensive looking, always looking around. What do you see? Is there like a kid playing with the ball on the side of the road? Alright, let’s keep that in my mind because if that ball rolls in front of my car, that kid might.

00:15:12

Jack

Chase that ball.

00:15:13

Jack

And you know, I mean you have to be you. You have to really be scanning your environment and really present. And that’s why I’ve got become a much worse driver as I’ve gotten older is I tend to get tunnel vision. I start to kind of.

00:15:28

Jack

My mind starts to wander and I’m just kind of on autopilot and especially when you drive to work the same way every day, you know, and you can get. Here’s a good word for our listeners complacent. It’s where you get lazy and you stop being vigilant and you stop being.

00:15:49

Jack

Focused and looking out for everything. And so you know, if I. If you told me, you know, Jack, you never have to drive again. But you can always have a ride somewhere.

00:16:00

Jack

I would take that deal in a second because I hate driving now. I’ve been driving for 30 years. I’m, I’m done. You know, like I’m, I. I’m it’s not interesting to me anymore, but I I do need a car because I need to get to work.

00:16:20

Jack

And taking the bus is takes me an hour longer to get there than it would if I just drive my car. So I I do appreciate the convenience of it, but I.

00:16:32

Jack

I don’t like driving and I do worry about other drivers who are being stupid or what if I don’t pay attention at one moment and something happens? Or what if something just happens accidentally? Those things really do freak me out, and so I don’t know. Hopefully the future.

00:16:53

Jack

It’s like automated driving, where no one’s really in control.

00:16:59

Jack

Accept.

00:17:00

Jack

Some computer system AI system that’s just kind of moving your car where you want it, where where it should go at a nice safe speed connected to all the other cars and and and, you know, get rid of this the human element because human beings are very unpredictable and there are some that drive.

00:17:21

Jack

Like psychos, you know, maniacs and others that Dr. responsibly and sometimes you just can’t avoid an accident. And yeah, you have to. Really. I mean, that’s why we have insurance.

00:17:35

Jack

But God forbid I, you know, hurt somebody or killed somebody. I don’t know how I would live with that.

00:17:44

Xochitl

I know I. That’s the things that really kill me about the idea of UM.

00:17:51

Xochitl

Of driving. It’s like I I really can’t get past that. I think I I think because we’re so close to fully automated vehicles, I may never drive. I may never drive. I may wait until we get there because I’m OK with walking places.

00:18:00

Jack

Yeah.

00:18:10

Xochitl

Getting Uber or taking public transport. But but I do kind of crave the freedom other people get when they drive, like it would be nice if I had a car and I could just hop in a car and drive six hours. Any place you know, like like a day trip.

00:18:25

Jack

Yeah, it’s really convenient. I I love the convenience of having a car. I I would be lying if I if I said, you know, getting groceries. You know, you could just put them in there. You don’t have to carry the groceries half a mile back to your house.

00:18:40

Jack

But you know, New Yorkers, they there’s they don’t need cars, you know, they can get around people who live in Seoul can get around. People live in Mexico, can get around. I think you’re going to be just fine without a car.

00:18:55

Jack

And.

00:18:57

Jack

Yeah.

00:18:58

Xochitl

Yeah. Well, listeners, let us know. Are you scared of driving like me or do you drive like Jack does and.

00:19:07

Xochitl

What is the driving culture like in your country? Do you feel like it’s safe and and have you learned to drive at an age appropriate time or not? Let us know in the comments at 8zenglishpodcast.com. Shoot us an e-mail at A-Z, englishpodcast@gmail.com and join the conversation on our WeChat and WhatsApp groups.

00:19:28

Xochitl

See you guys next time. Bye bye.

00:19:30

Jack

Bye.

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