Tonight there was a story on the Channel 4 news about the crush of 16-year-olds lining up for their driver's license before the start of school. Yeah, I was there -- not before school, but just after my 16th birthday. And the bad, very bad memories of that got my heart racing and made me act out in anger. Oh, fuck, what bad memories. ...
So just after my birthday I tried to get my license. I don't know about y'all, but here in Minnesota there apparently is only, like, two places in the entire state where you do your driver's test. I don't know where either place is. I don't know how to get back to the place where I did my tests even though it's 15 or 20 minutes away from me. It's like Platform 3/4 to Hogwarts; it's a magical place only teenagers with driver's permits are allowed to go. Also, unless you were one of the lucky few who had the foresight to make a reservation, all you can do is line up and park along one of several lanes. When a tester is damn good and ready, she or he will climb into the passenger side of your car (the only where getting into a stranger's car is a good idea) and you start the test. My brother, me, and my sister waited for hours, hours just to get a test. Is this how it's done in other states? If so, and even if it's not, somebody has to do something about that.
You know what? I should give an in-depth tale about the second time I failed the test, but I don't want to. Oh my goodness, just relaying the absolute exasperation whenever I missed the slightest thing while on the road course just brings me back to me being a scared and frustrated 16-year-old kid. The tone of her voice, as if she's trying to say, "You idiot!" whenever I try to do what she said, even though I didn't understand it and couldn't understand why she would make me do it ... fuck, a red mist just comes over me. And at the end, when she fails me, tells me I need a week of practice (bullshit I did) and then fucking smiles at me, after all the scowling and yelling she fucking did to me? Goddammit, I just want to go back and just scream obscenities, or even incomprehensible sounds at her. But how would I scream at her for what she did to me? Tell her, "Don't ever yell at me like that again?"
The third time I took the test I did pass, thank Buddha. But when she climbed into my car I told her something to the effect of, "Look, I'll try and do better than I did the last time, OK?" and she just took off her sunglasses and said something like, "I didn't test you before. I've never seen you before." And although she had the same face shape, height and hair, her much less mean and bitchy attitude makes be believe this was a different person. After all, she did pass me. Five years later, when I accompanied my sister through the wormhole to get her driver's license (I think she had to take it only twice, like my brother) I saw a harried woman that looked just like the bitch that failed me the second time. Wanted to catcall her while she was working, or even come up to her and smack the shit out of her. But I didn't. I just stared at her.
After I failed the second time my brother drove me to The Store, where I had to tell my parents that I failed it again. I think one of them asked why or how, and with all things in my life, up to that point and since, I had no answer. Instead I just went outside and paced for a good hour. It was pouring rain that afternoon at The Store, an apt metaphor for how my life's potential was crashing around me after that cunt failed me. And so I didn't come in. I kept walking outside in The Store's parking lot, wishing my life was over, letting the pounding rain become the white noise that numbed me from the demons of doubt and failure in my head. I think my parents each came out and caught me just standing in the rain. They left me alone, although what they saw probably cemented their suspicions that their middle child is a fucking weirdo.
So yeah, I spent much of this evening after the late local news gesticulating and waving my hands around like I was smacking someone, just to get through this bad, bad memory.
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