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After a month of classroom and seven tests and six days spent creeping around carefully laid out courses practicing backing manuevers, we hit the road on Wednesday.

And somehow I lucked out.

For good or bad, the instructor I drew has unleashed us on the general driving public and let us drive, which has been amazing. Picture driving as an adventure again, picture sitting in front of 20 tons slowly trudging through traffic grinding through 10 gears until suddenly, finally, you’re rolling free, stacks billowing.

Ooooh, baby, baby.

All would be rainbows in a bright blue sky and unicorns cavorting if it weren’t for the double clutch pump.

VDOT, in their infinite wisdom, requires double clutching through every gear as you upshift and downshift, which means you clutch, shift to neutral, clutch, and shift to the next gear.

Bored yet? No? Keep reading.

That was upshifting. Downshifting requires that you brake to match engine speed to road speed, clutch, shift to neutral, goose the gas pedal to bring the rpm’s back up, clutch, downshift with the gas back on and brake again to slow the truck. It’s quite the tap dance while you’re trying to bring your 20-tonner to a controlled stop before you mow down that little Ford Focus that just cut in front of you trying to get to the light first.

Are we having fun? Is anybody still reading this?

So anyway, in the last coupla days I’ve discovered that clutch and brake tap-dancing these big rig clutches and transmissions that’re as huge and gruesomely tough as the trucks themselves makes driving one of these big bitches a workout.

But ya know what else I’ve learned?

It’s flippin’ FUN.

THAT WAS THEN-

I wrote this during the first week of classroom tractor-trailerin’ training while I was peering around wondering what I’d got myself into this time and thinking these seriously vicious looking dudes were gonna beat the fuck out of me the first chance they got.

One of the people that somehow has the spare time to read my shit was also bored and lifeless enough to e-mail me.

Poor thing.

In her missive she told me that even the medical school D-listers would still be called Doctor when they got their degree- I think maybe inferring that I should just a tad more tender and understanding.

Inferences and warmy, tender understandings shoved aside, I feel like I should explain about Them.

Picture two rows of tables in a tiny cinder block room. Each table can, could, seat two.

At the front left is Baby Huey. He is fricking HUGE. He’s probably 350 lbs. and 6’4″ and has SIEG HEIL tattooed on his knuckles and sleeves creeping up both arms resplendent with Nazi and Adolf Hitler crap. And did I mention his shaved head is tattooed too? Yeah, baby. He sits by himself, I’m not sure why.

Next table back are the Twee? Twi? guys. They’re these black dudes that barely speak english and came from Uganda or someplace and would rather speak Twee. Or maybe Twi. Who knows?

And then there’s the perfect me and next to me is the spooky guy. I don’t know why, but he’s kinda glommed onto me, and, again, I don’t know why, but it doesn’t bug me. But he’s still spooky.

Behind me are two black guys. One has a really lyrical, almost Rastafarian cadence that’s fun to listen to for about 20 minutes. Unfortunately, the class is 4 1/2 hours. The other guy is really quiet and maybe a gang banger. I don’t talk to them.

Behind them, up against the wall, all by himself in a chair, is this sad white dude. He’s completely separated himself from the class on all levels. He spent time running and gunning in Iraq and just wants to get his CDL and vanish.

To my right is the goofy guy that wants to be my best friend ever and the portly black guy who’s NEVER driven anything with a clutch which I’m guessing will make the driving fun and interesting for the guys in his truck.

On the table in front of them is another vet and this skinny white dude that I’d like to talk to and find out his story, but probably won’t mostly ’cause my introvertedness won’t allow it.

So yeah, that’s Them.

THIS IS NOW-

Fast forward through a month of classroom and testing to the end of our first week actually driving the big trucks- (even though driving consists mostly of creeping back and forth around the fenced in yard trying to not run over traffic cones) and time and proximity and conversation have subtly shifted my perceptions.

Baby Huey is Brandon. He moved here from the pointy part of the state to train for a career that would’ve paid for his girlfriend and her three kids that he helped raise for the last nine years except that she called and told him not to come home during the second week of class.

The two Twee? or Twi? guys? They’re still turds.

I am, of course, still perfect in every way.

And the spooky guy? He’s Robert. After a protracted battle he finally wrested sole custody of his seven year old son from his dead wife’s parents. He adores his son. He’s still spooky but I like him.

The two black guys? The maybe gang-banger and the lyrical Rastafarian? They’re still annoying- if I have to listen to them argue about Eagles vs. Cowboys ONE. MORE. TIME. I might just, um, I don’t know, do something.

The sad white dude is still sadly conflicted. I’ve had a chance to talk to him now and, I don’t know, but, I think he’s heading down a really darkly sorrowful road.

The goofy overly talkative guy is still really goofy and non-stop talkative, like NEVER non-stop talkative, like it might be a disease or something and the portly non-driving guy is trying really hard to handle these trucks.

And the last two of our motley crew? The vet is only mildly annoying and the skinny white kid is David. He’s only 22 and already has a kid and is trying to live up to his father’s and grandfather’s expectations. Both were truckers and it sounds like they expect big things from him. He’s scrawny little guy with bulging eyes that sidles up to you like a whipped puppy. I talk to him every chance I get.

So that’s it.

That’s Us.

It ended.

Any dwindling hopes I might’ve had to fit in, to be one of the guys, to somehow bond with my classmates, was shot down on Monday when I aced the first of the nine (9?) tests (seven written and two driving) required to get my CDL and drive these big motherfuckers.

Actually, it wasn’t the acing of the stupid test- it was the instructor telling the ENTIRE class that I was the only one who’d done it that finally and definitively sunk me.

Hooded eyes slashed at me and tattooed knuckles wrenched calloused hands and I thought, Oh just fucking super.

Thanks sooooo much.

Hello segregated loneliness.

Man I hope I don’t get beat up.

So when WebSavvyMom commented on my previous post, saying “What do you think they say about you?”

I was all, like, “That’s a good question, I honestly don’t know”.

And then, cue the bafflement, ’cause, guess what? I’d never even thought about any of what I wrote or thought framed within the perspective of that question. Like THAT’S a surprise. Whew. I do love my crappy sentences.

But her question haunted me and made me think.

*pause*

Thinking takes me a long time.

*pause* *again*

Finally, after tortuously thoughtful hours, I realized that, hey, viewed from the perception posed by WebSavvyMom’s comment, that peering from that end of the telescope, I’M probably the freak, that I’M the one most ill-suited to fit in with my new world.

A sobering thought. One that I chased with a shot and a beer.

But it’s true.

It’s me that doesn’t belong. I’m a loner. And the class is all guy’s guys-they all hang and they all roll out at the breaks and smoke cigarettes with the instructor and trade stories and bond together and then they all roll back in together while I sit in the classroom and check e-mail on my iPad or read Carl Hiaasen’s new iBook which is totally fucking hilarious.

The book, I mean.

Man I hope I don’t get beat up.