Thursday, September 9th, 2010 Failure

...Backing into the wrong side of the road...

For the past month, I've been trying to get my license back. Why on earth I ever let the dam thing expire, is beyond me now. Oh well, Ce la Vie, such is life, we live and we learn. So all you out there in blobland: NEVER LET YOU DRIVERS LICENSE EXPIRE ! ! !

I took the written test three weeks back on Agust 17th and passed it with a near perfect score. The lady who served me, let me walk away without a drivers permit. I even asked for one and she said I didn't need it. I later called and found out that I couldn't practice or take the drive test without a permit. So, I went back in on Saturday, 9/21, early in the morning to stand two hours in line before the shop opened plus an additional two hours after the doors opened to pay an twenty dollars for a permit. Thus, far I am sixty dollars into it. And those bastards in government jobs have ripped me off twenty bucks. According to the DOL website, if I had bought a permit instead of a written test, I would have gotten two tries (which I only used one) at the written test for the same twenty dollars. I am never voting a pay raise for one of those mother fuckers ever again. As you can see, Tolkien is a huge literary influence on my life. If you've never read the Hobbit or Lord of the Rings then you might not know what I'm talking about.

Last Thursday, September 9th, I took the drive test with three practice drives under my belt and failed the test. I didn't even make it all the way through the exam before failing it.  

See, it says Not Qualified to drive...

I saved my score sheet so I know what I need to practice on just in case you want to be reminded of the different categories: backing, parallel parking, park and start on a hill, starting, lane travel, traffic control devices, stop signs / flashing lights, traffic signal lights, mechanical operation, left turns, right turns, uncontrolled intersections, following, passing, right-of-way, and general driving performance.

I failed the test with a fatal error. The tester wanted me to back around a corner to simulate backing into or out of a alley into traffic. Here's what happened. In my mind, I visualized that I needed to be on the left side of the street instead of right side, but in my mind left and right was reversed. Left-right reversal errors are not unusual for me to make. My day's not complete until I confuse my left with my right a hundred times. And this is why I believe that I have Jewish blood in me, because when I was learning the Hebrew alphabet in college, writing right to left felt more natural to me than writing left to right. After ten credits of Hebrew, I unlearned six years of the Special Ed class I was in all the way through elementary school where they taught me how to write left to right. I was all screwed up in this part of the exam.

On Friday, September 17th, I am taking it again down in Tacoma. I hope I pass it this time.

What gets me though is that when I was 16, I passed the drive test on the first time with nearly a perfect score. And everybody I practice drove with could see nothing wrong with my driving skill. It was as if I never had a seven year gap in my drive history. I wonder how many people with twenty-plus years of driving experience could pass a DMV drive test?