Baby, You CAN Drive My Car
by Karen Williams | June 23, 2006 - Seminole Chronicle
One thing I learned when getting my driver's permit a, uh, couple decades ago in Indiana: a permit is not a license. It was drummed into our teenage, foolhardy brains that this was a mere temporary permit, and if we so much as called it a license, we would be thrown into a dungeon with other immature pipsqueaks and not allowed to get our real license until doomsday.
So, when I was online, scheduling my daughter, Emily, to get her first real diver's license, I forgot that here in Florida, a permit is actually referred to as a first license. Thus I inadvertently scheduled her to go to the DMV office and get her permit again, just as she had already done a year ago.
A surly DMV worker, glancing at our happy, expectant faces and the official DMV computer screen, told us in no uncertain terms that I had signed Emily up for the wrong exam.
Emily shot me the same look as when I had brought along her baby photos when volunteering at her school: "How could you do this to me?"
"I must have gotten confused by the DMV Web site," I tried to explain to the grumpy worker.
"That Web site isn't confusing. It's perfectly straightforward," came the worker bee's reply.
"Well, what really got me confused was the fact that, in my day, we didn't call a 'permit' a 'license.' Have you ever thought of how foolhardy that could be?" I queried.
Two days later, as I remembered the DMV worker's glare as she pointed us to the door and with Emily worried that she had now forgotten all she knew about driving, we returned for a rescheduled appointment.
As my feller, Mark, and Emily and I waited outside for a person to take Emily on her road test, I felt some last-minute advice was in order.
"Do you think you can parallel park?" I asked. "In my day, we flunked the test if we couldn't parallel park. And don't forget to adjust the seat and mirrors. And for gosh sakes, don't sass the examiner."
"Enough!" Emily hissed and then a sweet "Hello!" as a woman with a clipboard approached us.
"Ready for your driving test?" the woman asked, looking at me. Apparently she thought I was in my 80s and needed an age-related exam.
"Oh, no, I'm fine," I gulped. "Haven't had a wreck since nineteen-ought-eight!"
The woman then recognized Emily as the examinee and escorted her to our waiting car, from which I had removed layers of fast food debris. No sense in the examiner sitting on a petrified hamburger bun and getting ticked off from the git-go.
Eventually Emily and the examiner returned, parked, and came walking towards us. Mark jumped up to take Emily's smiling photo. But Emily wasn't smiling, and neither was the examiner.
"So...she needs a little more...work?" I asked weakly.
"Actually she was the best driver I've had all day," the woman said, still looking stern.
"You mean...you had even worse drivers all day?" I asked, hoping Emily would feel consoled.
Then the examiner and Emily burst into maniacal laughter. Emily had passed the test, but they had agreed to mess with my mind.
It had never occurred to me that a DMV worker could possess such a sense of humor.
And it never occurred to me that I was about to become car-less and stranded at home for the rest of my natural life.
***
Copyright 2006, Karen Williams
