The fact that at age sixteen I failed to learn how to drive a car has handicapped my life activities and my mobility. To friends and associates, I apologize awkwardly, “I’m afraid this is a phobia. Behind the wheel, I have no coordination. I can’t do it.” All over the world, I have paid the price for taxis and often risky public transportation, and blamed myself for my shortcoming. (You’re a weirdo, Mimi. Everyone drives, even the Micronesians do it on their little Pacific islands. Why can’t you do this?)

Suddenly, James Paul Gee turns on the light, particularly with his chapter on “Telling and Doing.” He illuminates how a flawed learning experience can impair one’s self-identity and ability to integrate knowledge and skills; he shines a light on another model. Instantly, like in a video game, I can peel back the years (rather, the decades) and better understand what happened to my driving. Video heroine Lara Croft, who pushed back on her mentor Von Croy and figured out other ways to gain the competencies she needed, had not yet appeared when I was learning – or not learning – how to drive.

In my high school, the Drivers Ed program piled on “overt information” about road signs, car signals, speed limits and how to calculate distance between vehicles and change a tire. Then we did two scary sessions behind a wheel among some orange stanchions. I knocked them down. With a laminated Learner’s Permit in my wallet, it was time for Dad to take me out on the road.

“You’re an idiot!” he hollered. “Driving isn’t difficult. Don’t you understand how to make a left turn? Slow down, slow down!” My father was a scientist, a superb driver and a very logical and intimidating man. Maybe he didn’t realize I hadn’t learned the basics, like steering, accelerating and applying my foot progressively to the brake. At the end of our second lesson, Dad took the wheel to drive home. “I can’t take any more of this,” he said. I agreed.

Mom told me not to worry. Somehow we would get through the driver’s test together. In fact, the written test was a breeze. It was easy to memorize all that stuff in the manual. Unfortunately, I failed the operational segment three consecutive times. On the fourth try, an angel seemed to guide the wheel, as I glided through a parallel parking exercise within an inch of perfection. “That’s the way she always does it,” Mom declared to the policeman. “She was just nervous all those other times.”

With my driver’s license in hand, I took my Mom’s Pontiac (my Dad had banned me from his Cadillac) and proceeded to suffer three accidents in the next two months, including a fender bender at the Hot Shoppes drive-in, a failure to check the mirror before changing lanes on Rockville Pike, and damage to another vehicle in the parking lot of Montgomery Mall.

It never occurred to me, especially as a tearful adolescent, that I needed other learning strategies, that I might challenge my parents, or return to the basics and transfer theories into better driving practices step-by-step. I was no Lara Croft. My “projective identity” became that of a lifelong pedestrian.  Stepping back now and considering innovative ways to engage learners actively, in context and from the bottom up, I realize that the way we learn can make a profound difference in our lives. Frankly, that is why I want to be a teacher – even if I have to walk to school.