“Whatever you do, don’t get onto Storrow Drive.”

Fast-forward to a few hours later, and I’m driving the fairly new northbound tunnel of the Interstate 93 expressway, and trying to make the correct flash decision on what lane I need to be in at the two lane exit. Don’t get onto Storrow. Don’t get onto Storrow. Don’t get onto…shit. Before I know it, I’m heading southwest along the Charles River, admiring the Longfellow Bridge as it comes into view. I pick up my fancy Sprint PCS cell phone to call my sister.  

“Hey, sooooo, I accidentally got onto Storrow.”

Driving in Boston when you don’t have a solid recognition of the city’s fingerprints is a real pain in the ass. Especially when we were talking about the days where many of us drove around without any satellite navigation. You take the correct exit but neglect to properly align in the required lane….suddenly you’re long on your way to someplace completely different. I have never been a guru when navigating Boston. And on that particular day some 16 years ago, I was suddenly more likely to see Fenway Park than I was my sister’s place near Boston Garden. 

“You’re just gonna have to take an illegal U-Turn somewhere,” she advised me when I asked for help on the phone. “Otherwise, it’s just gonna get more confusing for you.” 

Cool. I thought to myself. Coming up into my line of view, I saw a break between the divider of Storrow Drive, complete with a “No U Turn” sign. That was my reversal. I downshifted and got into the left lane. I knew enough that I needed to cut across before I could give myself (or anyone else) time to think about it. 

If you’ve got to be a jerk while driving in the Commonwealth, it’s best you do it fast rather than piss the people around you off. 

Taking errant turns in Boston sucks because it’s a city where the streets designed for automobiles were shoehorned in long after the original city was mapped out. I think this is what gives the city its charm. That or perhaps its population who learned to drive using these streets.

All these years later, I find myself living in Rome. I drive nearly every day, and after a battery of mistakes and WTF moments that I still commit with regularity, my will has been sufficiently broken. It’s fine. Driving here is fine. Furthermore, driving around an “old city” such as Boston now sounds laughable to me. Rome’s network is a mess. But age and antiquity, as it turns out are relative things. And when I say that, I mean that driving in each city is equally valid, and equally ridiculous. 

“To drive in Rome, you need to be creative.” 

This is the observation made by a Roman as we sat in traffic and watched a motorcycle drive off the street, onto the sidewalk and then to the bike lane. He transited this improvised shortcut it until he made it to the front of the rush hour queue of motorized vehicles.

Italians are funny when they speak about situations like this. Depending on where they are positioned in a situation, they will either compliment or excoriate their countrymen for contravening the rules. One day, they’re shaking their hands up and down repeatedly while holding their fingers in a loose prayer gesture, bemoaning the fact that someone has parked in le strisce pedonali. Then, on another day, in order to run an errand without seeking that pesky thing known as a parking space—they’ll do the exact same thing. “Yes but it was fine- I was only parked in the crosswalk for a second.”

On the autostrada, Italy’s highway, all sense of conformity can be even worse. If you ever travel sections where they are redoing the roads and there are not yet dashed lines painted on the road, it becomes open season. You reach this point and it looks like one big session of the Mario Kart Grand Prix. The sudden jumble of cars and complete loss of lane structure makes you believe that road markings do in fact have their place in Italy.  

When I first arrived in Rome, I used to opt for the relative smooth of the city’s ring road in lieu of cutting across the city. Even if the mileage was considerably greater, I didn’t care because there were just too many days where I didn’t have the mental energy to pinball across Rome. These days, I almost always favor the city’s chaos. Like I said, Rome has broken me in. And yes perhaps it’s because I have just gotten used to things, but now, no matter how tight the maneuvering might be, I just go out and do it. I am not preoccupied by “what might go wrong” because, honestly, that question is ridiculous. It’s more like, “What will go wrong?” and I’m better off transforming myself into a willing participant. City driving is like a microcosm of living in general. 

In Boston, I might argue that the drivers are a bit more impatient— perhaps even more unkind. I say this not so much for the tourists who arrive in The Hub without the loric understand for how the local rules work, but I mean it more for the jockeying Bostonians who think that everyone else out there is an idiot. I have one sister who is a firefighter paramedic, and each time I drive with her, terms come out of her mouth that make even my sailor toes curl. As for Rome, everyone just kind of accepts that subpar performance is the norm. Laying on your horn isn’t so much used in traffic situations as it is for signaling to the person who has double-parked their car and blocked you in. 

I haven’t been here terribly long, but I have been in Rome long enough to start speaking with newcomers who voice apprehension about driving in the city. It’s chaos, it’s confusing. Even Google Maps is wrong a lot. Sure, I get it. But I also try to communicate something that I feel is underappreciated, and it is this: It is almost guaranteed that there are already more drivers out there doing it worse than you will. The rat’s nest of street angles that resemble a Geometry teacher’s ultimate dream simply take time to master. Getting yourself misdirected is the only way to learn. Throw in any number of  pop-up sinkholes, or le buche that the city won’t fill in…these threats to your car’s survivability actually help to slow down all of the idiots who are too stupid to realize that they are stupid drivers. A sense of humor is needed. Both here and in Boston. And honestly everywhere else, I suppose.

I am pretty sure that I earned a moving violation this past weekend while driving through in an unfamiliar Italian city. I realized my mistake in taking the bus lane while remarking to myself that the streets had suddenly gotten deliciously car-free and easy to negotiate. Then I looked up and saw the “bus lane electronically enforced” street sign. I whispered to myself a curse word that I would have uttered in Boston, and then then I got off the road as quicky as I could. It’s just another day, one where you win some and then you lose some. Or you are stuck with a 70 euro fine. No “End Of The World” stress—just another learning point to be filed away. 

Being an adult is definitely not always easy, but after a few decades of driving on this nonsensical planet, I am learning that none of it is worth getting too worked up about.