My first driving experience

When I went to Woodstock for the first time, Ann Harrison wanted to have a cake to honour me. She took me to a bakery and asked me to kindly stay inside the car so that the police would not tow her car away or give her a ticket. The car was parked right outside the bakery in the middle of the road.

Poor me! As soon as she went inside the bakery, a policeman came up to the car and demanded that I move it. I said, “I do not know how to move the car.”

“You have to!” ordered the policeman. “Do it right now!”

What could I do? I looked at the letters on the gear shift — D, R, N and so forth. The policeman was still insisting. I thought to myself: R means right, so I will put it in R and go right.

When I shifted the gears to R, the car all of a sudden went backwards and dashed against the car belonging to the police officer. He was parked right behind us. What a noise!

He began to shout at me. But I told him, “You forced me. I explained to you that I did not know how to move the car, but you forced me. I thought R meant right.”

The policeman admired my stupid innocence and he did not fine me.

From:Sri Chinmoy,My Consulate years, Agni Press, 1996
Sourced from https://srichinmoylibrary.com/mcy