I learned to drive in Boston.
Signalling is a sign of weakness.
When I was nearly 17, my family did the east coast history driving tour, by which I mean we loaded ourselves into the Honda Civic and drove from Seattle to Boston and then took a right. This was the mid 80s, and we had heard about the fun that is Boston driving, and had made plans to stay in Lexington and take the T everywhere. Good move, but we found ourselves early in Lexington and decided we'd drive downtown just to experience the madness firsthand before we parked the car for a few days.
I... I....
Ok, I get that at 16 I was not an experienced driver, but I was alert and highly observant and totally fearless. On that trip I drove in Seattle, MPLS, Chicago, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, DC, and Denver, and nothing bothered me. But Boston? That was some weird stuff there. Not just the drivers, but the streets and the traffic patterns and EVERYTHING.
I had forgotten this part (probably suppressed the trauma, haha) but mom reminds me that we were on a one-way street downtown, three lanes, no turns. We were the first car in the middle lane, stopped at a red light. I looked across the intersection and there were only two lanes over there! I checked to see if the left or right lane was going to turn, and no. Wait... there are three lanes on my side of the intersection and two lanes on the other side... something's gotta give... I'm in a Honda Civic with out of state plates... I said 'Mommmm?' and held up three fingers then two, and she said 'cross yellow, make a plan' and so I blasted the heck out of there when the light turned but hahaha what the heck?
