When I was eight years old, my five-year-old little sister announced that something was tapping on the wall of her bedroom at night. My parents thought she was full of shit, the way five-year-olds of... Read More
When I was eight years old, my five-year-old little sister announced that something was tapping on the wall of her bedroom at night. My parents thought she was full of shit, the way five-year-olds often are. But when they listened closely, they could hear it, too. There was something in the wall, all right. Something alive.That's when we started noticing the enormous, aggressive, terrifying stinging insects circling the corner of our house where her bedroom was. And that's when we called Bee Busters. Out came a young fellow in a white jumpsuit bearing the Bee Busters logo (a possibly copyright-infringing parody of the Ghostbusters logo), who identified the culprit as an unruly swarm of Continental Murder Bees or Brazilian Nightmare Wasps or whatever. I was eight. I don't remember.What I do remember is watching how calm and professional the guy was, and thinking about how weird it must be to have a job where you exclusively deal with completely wigged-out people. Like being a Bee Buster. Or an oncologist. Or a guy who teaches terrified adults how to drive.Hi, I'm Andy, and I'm a 32-year-old adult with a college degree and a steady job. And I just last week got my driver's license. I can sort of defend this: I've lived in cities all my life, I legitimately hate cars, and I love both walking and public transportation. But, yeah, at a certain point, I was just putting it off because I was afraid of driving and embarrassed that I hadn't gotten this taken care of sooner. So after sixteen years of cadging rides from friends and watching bouncers roll their eyes at my District of Columbia Identification Card (on the back, in big letters, it says, "NOT A DRIVER'S LICENSE"), it was time. You can't take your kid to the doctor in an Uber, y'know?In one brief rush of forward progress last year, I got a learner's permit, which I promptly stuck in a drawer. And, with a week to go before it was set to expire, I set up a road test. Then I finally made a good decision: I called Teddy.The point I want to make isn't that Teddy did a good job preparing me for the test. He did, for sure; after two hours with Teddy, I felt entirely ready, and ended up getting a 93 out of 100. He even helped to make the arrangements and let me use his car. But, more importantly, Teddy tolerated my completely unacceptable level of anxiety with incredible patience and good humor. At no point did he give voice to the glaringly obvious fact that it was pathetic for a grown-ass man to be learning how to change lanes, let alone having conniptions about it. Instead, he managed to give me confidence in the stuff I was doing right and tell me what I was screwing up in a way that didn't immediately drive me into a panic attack.The day I went to take the test, I waited outside the DMV next to a Hispanic woman around my age holding a folder and waiting for an examiner. Hey, I thought. I'm not the only adult doing this. Maybe there's nothing wrong with me. Maybe all my fear and shame were misplaced. Maybe this was always going to be fine.Then a teenager bounded up to her and screamed, "Mommy, I passed!"That's what life is like when you're a 32-year-old who doesn't have a driver's license. And that's why I'm glad I asked Teddy to help me get one. I mean, look, I passed the test, okay? And you can, too, Fellow Adult. But you and I both know that you're not shopping around for a driving instructor because you need driving instruction. You need a guru who can get you through the boundless humiliation of learning to drive as a grown-up. You need a coach who helps you not feel like vomiting at the thought of trying to park in a crowded lot. You need a Bee Buster who will take on those Romanian Fighting Hornets with grace and equanimity, and not make you feel like a total dweeb for needing him in the first place.You need Teddy. Read Less