Enough is Enough

This is a post from Esajudita.Com , written by the Blog's owner, Lena.

I enjoyed the post for it's glimpse into the trials of the Olim living in the Holy Land.

So, with out further ado, here's.... Lena!

Okay, people, this is it. This is the line at which I lose my patience. There is one very simple rule for dealing with me, and that is this: don't criticize me.

Ever.

For anything.

I've gotten way more criticism in my life than I ever deserved and I reached my threshold a long time ago.

But I'm sick of feeling like I have to stay quiet for fear that defending myself will alienate people. So there it is, straight up.

Now, for some background:

For those not in the know, in the past, it used to be that you could take your American driver's license into any MEMSI (I think I got that right) office and they would issue an Israeli one right there, on the spot. Well, before I came here, the rules changed and you must now go through one (or more) lessons and then a behind-the-wheel driving test.

Let's be clear: I consider this an inconvenience. I'm only doing it because I have to.

So after three years, with only one month left until the three-year mark, I finally decided to do something about this and called a driving instructor. I met her this morning in Tel Aviv, and after five minutes behind the wheel, she told me that she didn't like my driving. She said that it was too "energetic" (whatever the fuck that means) and she compared it to someone who eats as if the world were going to end in 30 seconds (which I don't, as anyone who knows me will tell you and besides, does that analogy make any fucking sense? No, it does not).

Trouble started right away when I was driving about 55-60 km/hour (25-30mph) which she said was too fast, and that I was scaring her. Ok, what the fuck? But fine, I slow down. She tells me to move into the left lane. I turn my signal on, I glance at my mirrors, and as I'm checking behind me, she grabs the wheel and moves it left for me.

::slam::

If you were in my car and you did that, you would be out on your ass before I would even have time to bitch-slap you.

An American instructor would give you the chance to make the change as you felt comfortable doing.

This happened one other time, in which I thought that there was too little space to move over, and she grabbed the wheel again and told me that since we weren't traveling at high speed, it was okay.

And here comes the real stunner: she asked why I looked behind me. At this point, I'm just confused and I tell her that I did that because that is what you are supposed to do. She says no, this is prohibited (אסור). Apparently, if you glance behind you to make sure that you will not be slamming into any oncoming cars, then you will hit someone in front of you. In eleven years of driving in the States - which includes driving from Virginia to Vermont, Virginia to Key West, Virginia to Columbus, Ohio, as well as trips between NoVa and Williamsburg almost every weekend for the last two years of my college life - this has never once happened to me. Or to anyone else that I have ever known. She explains to me that she knows that the Americans do this because she works with American students here and they all do the same thing.

Right. Because that is what you are supposed to do.

Longer story short, I had to fork over 120 shekels for today and another 240 on Thursday for another back-to-back session of being told that how my father taught me to drive is wrong (yes, she told me this today).

I swear to God that ff she insults my father one more time, she will be hearing about it. My father learned to drive in the fucking garment district of New York City, bitch.

Nothing you have ever done beats that.

Cultural relativism be damned. This is one area in which the Israelis need to learn from the Americans.