Have you Ever had an experience so LIBERATING you could Scream?!
Years and Years ago I took drivers education when I was still in high school and right before I turned 16. When it came time for me to take my permit test I failed it the first time…why? Because half the questions on there are trick ones where you just have to “know”. So I left that first day and I decided that I’d try again another day that I had free and had more time to study and review.
That second time came a couple weeks later when I was hanging out with my friend Jimmy and we found ourselves at the Department of Motor Vehicles. That second time because of lack of review I failed the test, at the time the people who ran the tests informed me that after two tries and two fails I would be required to pay to take the test from then on. It wasn’t hard to pass the test…answer 40 simple questions with options a through D or E, The questions were read out loud and the screens were easily touch screened. The questions for the test were crooked though…extremely crooked. After that second attempt I felt like a major failure, how could I the girl who got 100% on all my drivers education tests fail the permit test twice?! I gave up on the thing all together…if I was failing it when I thought I knew everything then I’d be failing it when I didn’t know anything.
I found myself behind the wheel of my mothers vehicle over the next few months over and over again though. My mother wanted to give me a taste of what life would be like as a driver and I felt that it was the worst decision she could have ever made. No one wants to be the odd one out in High School being one of the only people with a truck who doesn’t drive it to school but no one wants to be a failure either. The words of the test narrator echoed constantly in my head when I thought of the driving test “You have failed this test”. When I got my truck taken away from me because my mother made me an ultimatum of completing the drivers permit test or losing my truck I completely gave up hope of learning to drive completely. I became used to getting rides and using public transportation. I would bum rides from classmates and teachers and I felt very little when it came to shame about my non driving ways. I was too busy to drive and I had no time for a job to pay for the gas anyway. I would make my mother’s insurance rates go through the roof, they’d said so in home economics class way back in seventh grade. I would constantly make up one excuse after the other.
When I graduated High school I told myself that I would learn to drive before I got to college. During the summer between my Senior and First Year at University not only did I take up a position at a summer camp that was miles away from home and traffic and didn’t require a car, but I also learned that during the first year at Hamline Freshmen weren’t able to get parking spots if they did have a car because they were reserved for the faculty and upperclassmen. so I concluded that I’d wait out another year to get behind the wheel. I learned the Saint Paul bus systems and even though I would have to plan out more time to make trips to new places I was able to get around just fine without a car. It was this last summer when my lack of independence that came from not driving really hit me. I’m an adult and when I wanted to go out with people my own age and in a different city I was expected to drive to the location that I wanted to go. When I was looking for a job I was expected to be able to DRIVE to work everyday and arrive at my destination on time. When I was moving to a suburb that was far away from Minneapolis I realized that a car or the ability to drive would make it a lot easier for me to get back home so I wouldn’t have to wait for a bus that only came once and hour on the hour. Driving and the need for it became one of the only things That was hindering me in doing what I wanted to do.
It really hit home when I discovered that all the people I used to hangout in High School with were hanging out together every weekend. When I asked why I wasn’t invited to the outings I was told that it was because everyone knew I didn’t drive and no one wanted to pick my sorry ass up or have to spend the time dropping me off. (what great friends I have right?) It really hit me hard when the only friends who wanted to see me were the ones who had cars to drive over and visit me. It hit hard when I sat in the passenger seat of one of the people I took drivers education with and he told me stories of all the fun he’d had with his parents car when he’d first began driving…reckless and yet great life lessons learned.
So I needed to do something about this non driving problem. I used to blame my lack of interest in driving on a traumatizing experience I’d had as a child when my father had be driving around a parking lot during the winter. We’d been waiting for one of my siblings to get done with his or her piano lesson so we could go home it was snowing and I’d been sitting on my dad’s lap trying to reach the gas and the brake I remember he’d asked me if I wanted to park. Of Course I did and when I had the car perfectly lined up against a snow bank and I was going to press the final brake to stop the car after coasting into the perfect spot…I hit the gas instead and the van launched itself into the snow bank to get stuck…stuck in the snowbank in the middle of the snow which was starting to become a blizzard. I remember my father taking me off his lap and trying to work the car free from the bank. Then he tried digging it out and when that didn’t work he finally realized that with the amount of gas we’d wasted trying to get the car out that we’d have to get out of the car and find somewhere else to keep warm because the car’s energy wouldn’t last for long. I remember getting out of the car and walking to a community center that was a mile or so down the road. I remember everything along the way being closed and my father telling me that I’d done something terrible and that I’d never be able to drive like that with him again.
He never let me drive like that on his lap again and that story became his example of everything that could be done wrong when a child doesn’t listen to their parents when he was trying to teach my younger siblings a lesson. He never let it down and I still haven’t forgotten that moment till now. “We don’t want to repeat that snow bank accident” he would say.
I used that as an excuse for why I didn’t want to learn…I was terrible and I’d only screw it up!…that’s what I kept thinking to myself about my ability to drive. Whenever I was in the car with my mother I was afraid but She encouraged me and I always did well…but in the back of my mind I kept replaying the snow bank crashing into the car…the I kept feeling the jerk of my neck and the whiplash as we hit even though the pain was long gone.
It was something about my not being able to grow that made me want to do it one day. I had been at a job interview and after I was asked if I could drive I’d made up an excuse and half lied about my car needing to be fixed. There was a car that needed to be fixed alright, but it belonged to my mother and she’d been driving me around in it for years, being there when I called her and at my beck and call…she was getting tired of it and I was getting tired of it.
I was on her schedule and If she was running behind I was running behind. If I needed to get home and my siblings needed to get somewhere or picked up…I had to wait because “the world doesn’t revolve around little ol’ Corinne” Even though she really wants it to.
I remember after giving the woman at the interview the excuse she had turned to my application and checked off a box…then she made a strange face and dismissed me then and there. I was on Lake street and the international Market square Department of Motor Vehicles was right down the road. I decided that I’d go and take a chance at luck.
I hadn’t reviewed or seen the drivers manual in over five years. I thought to myself…if I don’t know it by now and some 15 or 16 year old or some foreign person trying to get their taxi license can pass it on their first try just bullshitting and using their common sense then I should be able to do it. If I fail now I told myself I don’t deserve to drive. The only positive of all the time I’d taken now between tests was that they didn’t recognize me and they assumed that I was coming to take the test for the first time and they didn’t charge me. There was only one rule that I’d remembered from the last time I’d taken the test…and that was the question I’d gotten wrong last to make me fail the test the previous time I’d taken it…something about how far a car should be from a biker on the side of the road I had never forgotten “3 feet” even though the illustrated picture clearly showed a car that is six or seven feet away from the biker…that question had haunted me 5 years.
I got to my booth and I started off alright…I winced at my first wrong answer…and again at my 2nd and 3rd…yet I kept going and I kept getting one after another correct. I got to my 32 out of 40th question and I got another question wrong. “You have failed this test” the computer narrator announced to me. ‘NOT AGAIN!’ I thought…why me? Why now?…I was SO CLOSE! I looked at the question and I realized that it was a complete trick question…when exiting a parking lot yes you should “look and listen” and yes you should “honk your horn” and yes you should “make a complete stop” and no you shouldn’t “close your eyes and hope your coast is clear” but the right answer was only one of those options and I knew it wasn’t the last one. I picked “look and listen” and the answer was “make a complete stop”…bogus.
I was so upset I went to the man running the tests and I asked him if the test was wrong…I explain the questions and he told me that he got this complaint a lot and that the tests were terrible, that the pictures weren’t accurate and that the questions often had more than one right answer. He explained to me that most of the people who had common sense and actually read all the question options usually failed the test on the first try because they took too much time and didn’t go with their gut instincts. He told me that he often just told people to try to take the test again at another location on the same day at a different site. That would be the best because no one had to get discouraged and the information was still fresh in ones brain. Not cheating…just a second chance…and for me a fourth.
So I told myself because the test was rotten I’d give myself another chance. I got on a bus and went all the way to downtown Saint Paul to the Department of Motor Vehicles. I waited in line again with yet another number and I told the woman that I was taking my drivers test (with a excited smile so she would think it was my first time) It worked and I got into yet another drivers permit test without having to pay a dime for a retake. when I sat at the computer I realized that I’d forgotten everything from the test I’d taken earlier that morning. Mainly because I’d decided that I didn’t even care anymore and because the snow outside the bus on the way to Saint Paul had been so beautiful and liberating that It had become like a white blanket or a dry erase board eraser wiping my brains slate clean…I started once again on the driving test and I answered every single question correct until the computer chirped…”You have completed 85% of this test correct you do not have the finish the rest of this test you have passed your test”…I was so excited that right away I hopped up and I asked to use a nearby phone…I called every number I could think of and I left messages telling everyone That I’d passed my permit test.
twenty years old and I’d finally passed something that I thought I’d never complete. My own younger brother Tyler had passed his test the first time he’d taken it and he would mock me and show off by asking my mother to drive and saying things like “when you begin to drive I will believe you are older and wiser than me” and by making me feel bad by saying “You haven’t done anything with your life, you quit school and you can’t even drive yet, you’re a failure.” In my brain I’d always known he was wrong but I’d taken that crap because I felt I deserved it.
After I completed that test I felt that I could do anything I set my mind to. I was their only 100% that whole day!
I filled out the paperwork and I paid my 12 dollars for my permit…I took my picture even though I looked terrible that day and I was smiling for cheek to cheek.
My brothers were shocked the next time they insulted me about how I couldn’t drive when my mother said “no, she can drive…just as well as you.”
Not long after that my mother’s car broke down…what bad timing right because I was hoping that I could learn to drive as soon as I possibly could…I had been dreaming to get behind the wheel again, a stick shift or not.
I was so excited tonight when once again I was able to drive my mother home. This time in a new automatic 2000 Green Volkswagen Jetta…the perfect sized car for me to learn and drive in.
I was so excited when I parked and I hit the brake instead of the gas when I parked. And I am so excited that when Craig comes I can show off my skills as a driver.
The funny thing about all this is…that in Scotland people don’t drive anywhere, they walk…and Craig and his sister have yet to get their license. He is among the majority of students my age and younger who has yet to get his license because he’s learned to live without one and he hasn’t needed one.
What a backwards mixed up world I live in…
I’ll be moving to Scotland in May.
Who?