What Was I Thinking?

Charles and I have been married for 21 years come this November. He spent the first eight of those years trying to get me to learn how to drive a big rig. To understand how formidable his quest was you have to understand where I was when he began.

I had been a legal secretary for most of my adult life. I grew up in New York City and as an adult I lived in Stated Island. In short, I was a city girl. My dad was in the Air Force and as a child I split my time between wherever my dad was stationed and the lower east side of Manhattan. Whenever my dad went out on his isolated tours of duty my mom and I lived in Manhattan and I went to Catholic school.

I left home at an early age and survived by my wits. I knew that I needed to find work in order to survive so I went door to door looking for work. One day I found myself at a 24 hour diner. I really liked the feel of the place so I started going to this diner almost every evening. I wiled away my time after a fruitless day of looking for work by ordering the least expensive menu on their menu; Sanka coffee and toast.

One day, after I had been up for several days, I found myself at that diner again. It turned out that the people who owned that diner were first generation Greeks. We started talking to each other in Greek, me speaking broken Greek to their perfect Greek, and they ended up offering me a job. They taught me everything that I needed to work as a waitress at their diner. That was my first lucky break. I worked for them off and on for a few years and keep in touch with them to this day.

For a few years I bounced around doing a little bit of this and a little bit of that. Among my occupations were: carnie girl (I worked for the James E. Strait Traveling Carnival Show [I really did run away and join the circus LOL), bartender and dancer. During a lucid period of my young life I somehow managed to study for my GED, which I obtained when I was 20 years old. Also during this same lucid period, I taught myself how to type. When I got my typing speed up to 45 words per minute I talked my way into a position at a temp agency as a temporary clerical worker.

In time I was sent to a law firm to fill in for one of the secretaries who was going on vacation. The lady that I had filled in for was preparing to retire and liked me. They offered me her position and she taught me as much of what she knew as possible. I ended up staying at that law firm for two years. While working as a legal secretary I took a correspondence course and obtained my paralegal certificate. I guess you could say that I had all the makings of an old school truck driver from way back then: I am a self-taught person!

So, fast forward ten years: I was living in El Paso, Texas and married to a truck driver who began pestering me to learn how to drive a big rig almost from the very beginning of our marriage in 1989. When he first started his pestering I thought he had lost his mind. I’ll be honest with you: I was petrified to even sit on the seat in front of the steering wheel. And when he started that big old truck I just about jumped out of my skin.

Actually, what made me go to school to learn how to drive a truck wasn’t so much my husband’s gift of persuasion; it was the low wages I was earning in a border town. That is the reality of why I decided to become a truck driver. It was either starve or make some changes! I got sick and tired of earning a top hourly rate of $9.50 an hour! I knew that I would experience a drop in income by moving to El Paso, I just didn’t realize that it would be a 50% drop!

I was a two week wonder. I remember it like it was yesterday: there I was with my CDL in hand and someone was actually expecting me to drive! In my two weeks of experience I had only gone out on the highway three times: twice as part of a group of students and once during my test! The only thing that I really and truly remembered from the previous two weeks was: 13’6”, period. I think that I had only hooked up to a trailer maybe twice. That anyone could expect me to actually drive this thing was unbelievable to me! How my husband would actually consider trying to sleep behind me was another matter altogether!

Charles started me out real easy: I only drove four hour shifts. I can still remember being so scared that I barely turned my head from left to right. I held on to that steering wheel with a death grip! The first ticket I got was in (I think) Virginia. I had missed all the over head signs telling me about a scale up ahead. You see those signs were not on the side of the road where I could move my eyes to see them. Oh no, they were overhead hanging off the over pass. Well, how could anyone expect me to see those signs? After all, if I was too scared to move my head from left to right how in the heck would I be able to move it up or down? I remember asking Charles what I should do as the scale master was racing out of the scale house. His response: pull the hell over. He’s always been real gentle with me (as you can tell).

The next four years were a very interesting time for Charles and me. For the first time (and I am sure that some of you who have read some of my posts can feel my pain), I was not the boss. I had to rely on Charles for everything. My very life depended on making sure that I checked in with him. What a time. It was a real challenge. After putting up with his you know what for seven months I decided that I had had enough. Boy, he was surprised when I quit the company we worked at and signed on with Werner.

Apparently, Werner had a lot more confidence in my skills than my husband. It’s a wonder I didn’t kill myself in my short time with them. But I did accomplish one thing though: I actually learned how to drive that truck. You see, Charles was too protective (insert here that he had a strong belief that I would kill us both) of me and wouldn’t let me do anything more than basically hold the steering wheel. Under his tutelage I didn’t know how to back my truck and I didn’t know how to deal with anything else truck related except for holding the steering wheel. He’s an old school truck driver and, while he loved me as his wife, he had absolutely no respect for me as a truck driver. And why should he have? I wasn’t a truck driver; I was a steering wheel holder!

Werner set me loose in a Freightliner Classic on the east coast. They had a lot of confidence in me (insert here that they could care less if I lived or died) and just let me run wild! Boy oh boy did I learn how to drive a truck! I also learned how to deal with all my paperwork, how to read a map, how to plan my trips, the difference between north and south and east and west, how to load and unload, how to back that baby just about anywhere and last but not least, how to ask for help. It was a humbling experience.

I stayed with them for a few months until my husband asked me to come back and drive team with him again. After some thought (you know I didn’t even tell him how much I had missed him, right?) I said that I would even though it meant giving up my freedom (NOT). I hope he doesn’t read this. But in reality, I didn’t mind; I had proven my point. I didn’t want to be a steering wheel holder. I wanted to be a truck driver. And the love affair began anew. No, not with my husband, that never ended, with driving a truck! Having said that, I still consider myself a trainee because I still have so much to learn.