What Happened at the DMV Today
Charming indeed is that quaint rite-of-passage of the Californians, the trip to the DMV to get one's driver's license. It requires numerous forms and documents and tiresome questions about whether one can read and what the proper procedure for making left turns is, and the variations thereof when one is sharing the road with a porcupine, but as these parts of the tale have been judged too boring for inclusion in today's narrative, we shall pass over them and proceed directly to the entertaining part, which happen to take place but a few hours ago--THE DRIVING TEST.
THE DRIVING TEST started with me sitting inside the car, helpfully pointing out to the examiner the location of the headlights, turn signals, emergency brake, windshield wipers, and various other car accessories that nobody uses in real life. I thought I was doing a really excellent job at this point. I mean, do YOU know where your defroster is? I thought not.
However, the test went slightly downhill when I had to actually start driving. "Make a left turn out of the parking lot," the examiner said. But I was rather flustered and made a right turn instead, and got rather close to a woman pushing a baby carriage across the street. "It's OK," the examiner said. "Just calm down and relax. There's nothing to worry about." "All right," I said bravely, and nearly ran a stop sign.
Oh, dear, I thought. This test is going rather disastrously. But after the rocky start, things seemed to be improving. I managed to make some more left and right turns and change lanes two times without incident. We curved back around to the streets where the test began. There was a stop sign ahead, so a braked to a smooth, clean stop behind the white line, just like I was supposed to. A pedestrian was about to cross the street, so I waited. Halfway across the street, the pedestrian stopped and looked at me. It was the woman with the baby carriage--and I soon saw that she had recognized me, too.
"Hey, look!" the woman said, rapping on my windshield. "What you did back there was dangerous! My little Peachie could have been killed!"
"'Peachie'?" I asked, somewhat bewildered.
"My baby, you idiot!" she yelled, thrusting her bundle at me so that I could see that it did, indeed, contain an infant with a somewhat orangey complexion. "I'm terribly sorry," I said. "You see, I was a wee bit nervous--this being my official DMV DRIVING TEST and all--"
However, this woman rather neglected to display the requisite amount of sympathy for my plight, and interrupted me with, "Now she's going to need therapy, you know!"
"I see," I said, and swallowed, trying to think of a tactful way to inform her that the details of one's child's mental health treatments are not, in polite society, considered a topic to be discussed with persons of but twenty minutes' acquaintance.
However, I was interrupted by the sound of a horn. Glancing in my rearview mirror, I saw an oversized teal SUV behind me. "Move it, lady!" the driver shouted.
I leaned out the window and turned to face him. "Sir," said I, "I would indeed be most happy to comply with your request, but at the moment I am conversing with this young lady."
However, he was unmoved by my courteous response. "You fucking ho-bag!" he yelled. "I've got a gun, you know! Somewhere...er...dammit, Brandine, why do you have to rearrange the glove compartment every time you sit there. Every time!"
"Sir!" said I, quite taken aback. "I must object to being addressed in this shocking manner! If you had any decency--"
"Found it!"
Frankly, that was just one interruption too many for me. I put my hands on my hips and stomped my feet and prepared to give him a piece of my mind.
Unfortunately, the aforementioned foot stomping caused me to lift my foot off the brake pedal and slam it onto the accelerator. "Oh, dear me!" I said as the car swerved into a motorcycle going in the opposite direction, causing it to disappear ominously under my front tires.
To get a better impression of exactly what happened, imagine that, halfway through that last sentence, the driver of the SUV shouted "Finally!" and also hit the gas. Unfortunately, the little dust-up with the motorcycle had done some inconvenient things to my momentum and he hit me, spinning the car around 180 degrees and sending me flying into the path of Peachie & Co.
At this point some words must be devoted to the extraordinary resilience of motherhood. Even as she lay in the street, blood gushing from her left leg and drenching poor little Peachie, who had fallen at her feet, this fine specimen of maternal instinct managed to lift her right fist and shake it at me, shouting, "I can sue! I can sue! I have a top-notch lawyer, you know! I'm calling her right now--you owe me a new cell phone, too--it's your fault this one got all bloodied up--Francine! Francine! Some bitch hit me--no, with a car! I'm lying in the middle of the street, for Christ's sake! Call an ambulance, will you, and then we're gonna sue the little--Peachie, dear, it's not nice to play with mommy's blood--aaahhh! Put those ligaments down right now!"
As sirens began to wail intermittently in the distance, an uncomfortable silence descended over my vehicle, perhaps because we had a spectacular panoramic view of the scene--three bodies lying in the middle of the street, a crumpled motorcycle, a battered SUV with two bullet holes in the rear window, the shocked examiner beside me, incredulously poking at a chest wound, among sundry other sights. "So," I said, thinking this was an opportune moment to engage in some awkwardness-dispelling small talk, "I suppose this means I failed the driving test?"
THE DRIVING TEST started with me sitting inside the car, helpfully pointing out to the examiner the location of the headlights, turn signals, emergency brake, windshield wipers, and various other car accessories that nobody uses in real life. I thought I was doing a really excellent job at this point. I mean, do YOU know where your defroster is? I thought not.
However, the test went slightly downhill when I had to actually start driving. "Make a left turn out of the parking lot," the examiner said. But I was rather flustered and made a right turn instead, and got rather close to a woman pushing a baby carriage across the street. "It's OK," the examiner said. "Just calm down and relax. There's nothing to worry about." "All right," I said bravely, and nearly ran a stop sign.
Oh, dear, I thought. This test is going rather disastrously. But after the rocky start, things seemed to be improving. I managed to make some more left and right turns and change lanes two times without incident. We curved back around to the streets where the test began. There was a stop sign ahead, so a braked to a smooth, clean stop behind the white line, just like I was supposed to. A pedestrian was about to cross the street, so I waited. Halfway across the street, the pedestrian stopped and looked at me. It was the woman with the baby carriage--and I soon saw that she had recognized me, too.
"Hey, look!" the woman said, rapping on my windshield. "What you did back there was dangerous! My little Peachie could have been killed!"
"'Peachie'?" I asked, somewhat bewildered.
"My baby, you idiot!" she yelled, thrusting her bundle at me so that I could see that it did, indeed, contain an infant with a somewhat orangey complexion. "I'm terribly sorry," I said. "You see, I was a wee bit nervous--this being my official DMV DRIVING TEST and all--"
However, this woman rather neglected to display the requisite amount of sympathy for my plight, and interrupted me with, "Now she's going to need therapy, you know!"
"I see," I said, and swallowed, trying to think of a tactful way to inform her that the details of one's child's mental health treatments are not, in polite society, considered a topic to be discussed with persons of but twenty minutes' acquaintance.
However, I was interrupted by the sound of a horn. Glancing in my rearview mirror, I saw an oversized teal SUV behind me. "Move it, lady!" the driver shouted.
I leaned out the window and turned to face him. "Sir," said I, "I would indeed be most happy to comply with your request, but at the moment I am conversing with this young lady."
However, he was unmoved by my courteous response. "You fucking ho-bag!" he yelled. "I've got a gun, you know! Somewhere...er...dammit, Brandine, why do you have to rearrange the glove compartment every time you sit there. Every time!"
"Sir!" said I, quite taken aback. "I must object to being addressed in this shocking manner! If you had any decency--"
"Found it!"
Frankly, that was just one interruption too many for me. I put my hands on my hips and stomped my feet and prepared to give him a piece of my mind.
Unfortunately, the aforementioned foot stomping caused me to lift my foot off the brake pedal and slam it onto the accelerator. "Oh, dear me!" I said as the car swerved into a motorcycle going in the opposite direction, causing it to disappear ominously under my front tires.
To get a better impression of exactly what happened, imagine that, halfway through that last sentence, the driver of the SUV shouted "Finally!" and also hit the gas. Unfortunately, the little dust-up with the motorcycle had done some inconvenient things to my momentum and he hit me, spinning the car around 180 degrees and sending me flying into the path of Peachie & Co.
At this point some words must be devoted to the extraordinary resilience of motherhood. Even as she lay in the street, blood gushing from her left leg and drenching poor little Peachie, who had fallen at her feet, this fine specimen of maternal instinct managed to lift her right fist and shake it at me, shouting, "I can sue! I can sue! I have a top-notch lawyer, you know! I'm calling her right now--you owe me a new cell phone, too--it's your fault this one got all bloodied up--Francine! Francine! Some bitch hit me--no, with a car! I'm lying in the middle of the street, for Christ's sake! Call an ambulance, will you, and then we're gonna sue the little--Peachie, dear, it's not nice to play with mommy's blood--aaahhh! Put those ligaments down right now!"
As sirens began to wail intermittently in the distance, an uncomfortable silence descended over my vehicle, perhaps because we had a spectacular panoramic view of the scene--three bodies lying in the middle of the street, a crumpled motorcycle, a battered SUV with two bullet holes in the rear window, the shocked examiner beside me, incredulously poking at a chest wound, among sundry other sights. "So," I said, thinking this was an opportune moment to engage in some awkwardness-dispelling small talk, "I suppose this means I failed the driving test?"