Adolescence: complete

Whew. It still hasn't sunk in that I finally have a full driver's license.

At my age!

After about 10 years of knowing I was going to have to get it dealt with!

In spite of the 14 mistakes I found marked on my test report after the dust settled yesterday!

But it's true: I've finished that project. And as it's hard on the heels of another finished project that should have been completed while I was still in high school (getting braces), I now feel that my adolescence is finally all wrapped up.

Translation: I get to have my 20s now.

The first thing I did after dropping by the office where I needed to renew the license and have my picture taken was to drive to the grocery store for this:


I hadn't tried this flavour before but they were out of Vanilla Swiss Almond (chocolate-covered almonds in vanilla ice cream for bonus protein) so I succumbed to the melty looking caramels. It's great and I did eat the whole thing before bedtime. I still like VSA best though.

And now that I've had all that sugar and a pretty good sleep I'm thinking...

... time to get back to work on that novel? A novel is a good thing to write in your 20s.

For test results, click here

6:55 am

This is where I will check in after my driving test today and post whether I passed or not so that everybody can get off the edge of their seats and go on with life. I'll be home and post-ready by between 12:30 and 1:15.

For now, I'll just give you today's update:

I did get out to drive yesterday, deciding that I should maybe just do a final polish on the whole parking thing. I'm so glad I did.

Seems I have a 10% chance of doing a parallel park right the first time, and a 75% chance of knowing when to stop correcting to get it exactly right the other 90% of the time. That's if I'm just parking behind one car and not between two. If I'm between two I know how to correct but have about a 40% chance of not hitting the curb. Hitting the curb, you lose points. Jumping the curb, you fail. So let's hope I'm not asked to do one between two cars up a hill backwards, shall we?

(There is only about a 10% chance I'll be asked to do a parallel park at all, and I have the last test slot before lunch on what will apparently be another oppressively hot day. I'm going to just not worry about this.)

Backing into a space in a parking lot, I have maybe a 5% chance of getting it right the first time, but a 95% chance of adjusting successfully before my examiner dies of old age. There's a 90% chance I'll have to do this one.

Driving into a space in a parking lot - whoa. That one is a big zero. I couldn't get it right even once, and no amount of correction made it perfect. But that's more the fault of my car and its not-so-fab turning radius. Only 10% risk I'll have to do this one, and if I do my confidence is going to get me through the amount of points I'll lose. Since I know exactly what to ask of my car, the confidence level should be pretty solid.

Apart from a little more practise pre-test, I'm left with only one thing to do: be very meditative and focused and do only the thing I am doing when I am doing it. I won't fail on parking. I will lose points, but not enough to fail unless I mess up badly every 6 or so minutes. So I suspect the key is to take it slow whenever I'm asked to execute something, so as to drag out the time spent doing them and leave less for doing something else.

Have a good morning, folks - see you later!

12:00 noon

I PASSED!!!!

I didn't start off well in the parking lot where the examiner was asking me to demonstrate that my lights worked, but when I parallel parked (nailed it) he said 'Beautiful!" and a few minutes later in the emergency stop he told me he was really impressed with my driving.

So now I just have to head to the nearest motor vehicle office and get my license renewed and my picture taken and I won't have to take another road test till I'm 85 or something.

Man. I could sleep for a week - and finally, I should have time to.

Too ready?

I had a great driving lesson on Saturday and at the end of it my instructor said Well, I'm pleased to see you're multitasking now. The downside is, you're not quite ready to do that.

ACK.

This was mostly a reflection of my chatting while driving, something I will not be doing on the actual test since examiners limit their conversation to things like "When safe to do so, move one lane to the left." Even I can't find much to work with there.

But yesterday, when I rushed out of the house under pressure for practice time, and again today when I had my last lesson before the test, I noticed I'm definitely getting sloppy - even a little aggressive - with my city driving.

Maybe I'm practicing too much, to the point where I'm comfortable and not paying so much attention to every detail? Maybe it would be good if I took tomorrow off entirely, and just went over everything one last time right before I have the test on Thursday?

Or maybe these two bad practice sessions are the consequence of forgetting my St. Christopher medals at home and I should stop obsessing and get a good sleep.

I kind of like that idea, actually. All it's missing is the chocolate.

Three little words

1. Driving
2. Knitting
3. Takeout

Three days and counting, people: and amazingly, I feel nearly ready for what will hopefully be the last road test of my life.

(though even more hopefully, not because said road test will mark the end of same.)

Saturday morning, I had a fabulous driving lesson that involved repeat loops around two different highways, including The Busiest Highway In North America (TM). I felt so comfortable afterward that I actually drove out of town on it later in the day to take some friends out for supper and one of my passengers was sufficiently comfortable to doze off.

(we will not discuss the left I had to make onto a busy 4-lane road out of a movie complex when I came across an unexpected No Left Turn sign en route to the restaurant, apart from noting that banshee-like acceleration foiled the Lincoln behind me in its efforts to make contact. Thank you Manny for that tip.)

However, since I have to have two lots of (actual, professionally-commissioned) knitting work done by test day or the day after, I am feeling somewhat less poised about that element of this month's non-writing endeavors. Saturday's meal wasn't takeout, so I brought my knitting along, and I did a lot of it while we waited for a table.

Sunday being a day of rest, I drove friends to another friend's place about twice as far away via another highway, where they all swam and played and I sat under a patio umbrella and knit some more. More knitting more knitting more knitting, takeout, more knitting and a movie:

A Kid for Two Farthings

which I really liked and highly recommend.

Today is a statutory holiday where I live so naturally I'm about to go drive some more and then -

Yeah, well. I bet you can guess. And then out for supper again to another knitting-friendly restaurant because I am out of takeout places/officially sick of pizza.

Happy Victoria Day!*

* alternate choice for those three little words

Retiring ways

Lately my job has been to look into retirement living and whoa, where can I sign up? All your meals prepared, tray service when you're sick, all your laundry done and pressed and hung back up for you, your space professionally cleaned every week, entertainment brought in... man. Bliss.

I could use some retirement right now if it meant a guilt-free break from driving practice. I had to take breaks on both Saturday and Sunday owing to extreme weather conditions (proof: many more giant tree branches all over the neighbourhood lawns and porch roofs and on the roads) and I thought I used the time effectively to catch up on life, but apparently not.

And the break didn't make me a better driver either because during yesterday's 30 minutes of trying to build on the meager parking skills acquired during last week's lesson, I managed to hit the curb so many times I fear it thinks I'm annoyed with it.

One thing I do know, I think - I'm pretty sure but I may guilt myself out to the driveway about 9:30 so I don't carry guilt all day - is that I'm taking today off too so that I can catch up on work and maybe even catch a nap. For some reason I can't imagine I haven't been sleeping well.

Okay, so maybe I will drive to the grocery store. I can practice back-in parking... and pick up some chamomile tea.

Don't panic: be somebody else

"Nervousness is okay," my driving instructor told me on Monday. "It's a normal human reaction. Panic is not okay."

I thought that was a good window onto a healthy life - you can't really help nerves (I've tried) but you can function through them, perhaps even more effectively owing to the attention you give to whatever is making you nervous; panic is just paralyzing and not at all helpful.

He also pointed out that even if you don't personally need a particular skill, you can still use it to serve others. If you know how to swim, for example, you can save a life. So too with driving, helping out elderly neighbours or getting somebody to the hospital.

I like the idea of service, because you get so much more out of that than you put in.

The nerves vs. panic thing, too. It reminded me of my high school acting efforts, which were persistent if not brilliant, because I always seemed to do better with a good dose of stage fright.

I didn't try to go on with it because while I was super at memorizing lines and saying them expressively, I really, really didn't like the idea of becoming one with the character. I found it frightening not to just be myself. This isn't a problem for me with fiction, even when the character whose perspective I'm writing from is saying or doing things I find unsettling; somehow, I can spin out many different personalities through my fingers and never lose sight of me.

Unfortunately, right now it would be helpful to lose sight entirely. A Mary who doesn't worry about a thing but just gets on with it - that's what I need to be.

Instead I am being a lopsided Mary who worries at lot and creates even more potential for that by getting on with it anyway. 'It' being the booking of two appointments with two different driving instructors, one Saturday and one Sunday, both for highway driving (but both in my own car this time.)

After I did that yesterday, I went out and parallel parked perfectly on the first attempt, and then I bought groceries just to remind myself how nice it is not to have to walk them home, and when I got home I decided it's not worth all this stress just to have my license.

But I'm going to try anyway. Maybe I'm not any of those other Marys, but just my own worst enemy?

Progress report

Because I know everybody else is on the edge of whatever seat s/he is currently occupying about this whole Mary's Driver's License saga, I thought I'd point out that today marks one whole week since I started putting myself into the car on a daily basis.

Admittedly, prior to these 7 days, I spent 3 years avoiding all opportunities to drive, so I'm far from accomplished. Still, I have made some progress. I can now

change lanes (as opposed to shrieking, signaling, and darting down the nearest side street)

make a three-point turn (though imperfectly) and

... h'mm. I can't actually think of a third thing. Drive aggressively? Is that a good one or did I pick up another bad habit while overcompensating for giving away my right of way?

Okay, let's count making an appointment for the actual test instead. May 27. That's about 30 days away, I think.

I also think 30 days is nowhere near enough. After a brief surge of confidence, plummeting optimism over the past two days of driving practise has me questioning whether I shouldn't just cancel the test altogether and let my license go.

I'm not quite sure what happened. On one of the days, I drove with a white-knuckle passenger whose navigation skills were sadly lacking, and narrowly escaped becoming part of a quite serious accident that happened about three minutes before I made a left turn into the site of it.

On the other, I drove my instructor's car on the highway, twice, even though I never did get the hang of his gas pedal and couldn't accelerate at all comfortably. I experienced moments of sheer terror in which I thought I want to stop the car right now and walk home which is just about the worst thing to think while driving in the extreme left express lane on the highway.

That one lesson alone further complicates the question:

Do I take the test in my instructor's car, which has a brake on the passenger side and a big sign on top that says Student Driver and might therefore make my examiner more comfortable or

Do I take the test in my car, which I know well, even though its turning radius is less than ideal and its visibility marginally less good, because I will almost certainly drive better in it?

Stymied by that decision, I'm not sure whether I will try driving today or not. I should. But I have a lot of other stuff to get done and out of the way and today is a good day to deal with them; also, I think I need a break after so many days of stress.

Maybe I need to keep getting back on the horse.

Or maybe I just need to eat a lot of chocolate.

Just like life

Life is scary sometimes, isn't it? I mean, when you're young and you look ahead into your 20s and 30s - where will the job come from, the place to live, the person I really want to have children with? How am I going to find a way to do what I really love and get paid for it?

You can imagine those things all you want, but you won't know - you can't come close to finding out - until you're actually out there, living. And when you're in there living, you have to be able to look around and recognize that everybody else is, too. You have to know you have a right to be out there, and even if your path is different from others', you need only to follow certain unspoken rules of conduct to move freely through the masses.

Yesterday I had my first driving lesson in a little over four years, and it was just like that. Everybody has the lane they're sitting in, the space they occupy, and they all just have it granted to them. You just have to move along the road the way everybody else is, and make your turns when everybody's agreed you're next, and change your lanes when the car behind you fills the correct percentage of your rear view mirror, and then - voila! - you'll be where you were going.

Jerry agreed that I will need a ton more practice before I'm ready for a road test. I need to get out three or four times a week, he says, for at least an hour each time.

Really? I asked. I was thinking, like, every day for at least an hour.

Ummm, yes, that would be good, he said.

I need to brush up on the basics like full stops and tighter right turns and oh MAN, lane changes, and then I need to focus on a whole lotta parking. But my main problem is confidence, as in, I have none. I give my right of way too freely, I wave other cars through. I panicked and darted off to a side road when he wanted me to make a lane change on a super busy one.

Accepting all this, I made another appointment with Jerry and then went inside to book my actual test (end of May) and to sit glumly, worrying.

After supper I got back into my car and this time, instead of taking back roads, I got myself into a stream of traffic and took the nearest busy one - the one with the lane changes and the cars chronically parked in patches along the side. I changed lanes twice, and when I came to the place where I nearly had an accident last week I paid closer attention, and when I got to four way stops at almost but not quite the same time as somebody else I took my right of way and let them wait.

And you know what? I feel better.

Well, a little better, anyway.

Seven weeks

Yesterday I found out that my driver's license will remain intact until June 4th no matter how many times I fail the final, 45-minute, highway-inclusive road test of the graduated licensing system where I live. However, if I retake the initial 15-minute test and fail, I'm done. I'll have to start over.

Translation:

After effectively not driving for the past three years, and not having parallel parked or backed into a parking space (or even driven frontways into one located between two other cars) or changed lanes in four, I have seven weeks to become enormously comfortable and confident in my car - while it's moving among other vehicles.

At high speeds and in multiple lanes, or downtown among streetcars and jaywalking pedestrians and weaving bike messengers.

All my clever procrastinations are over, folks. I gotta detach myself from the keyboard and the knitting needles and transform myself into Girl Who Loves Driving!

(best wishes welcome, sigh.)

How the driving is going

So, yes. It's now April, which means I have 2 months to pass a road test or start over from scratch with my driver's license.

And though I am seriously questioning why I need a license at all given that I have barely driven since I got the one I have nearly five years ago, I did get out last night to practice. It didn't go so great.

First mistake: deciding to just get out there before I talked myself out of it, with complete disregard for the time of day. Usually I go out in the morning, just after rush hour. I'm used to the traffic flow then and it didn't occur to me it would be different just before 6pm.

First clue I'd made the first mistake: looking at block-long lineup of cars waiting in the road I needed to make a left into. Right! The other rush hour!

It's a two-lane road and normally I make a left into the left lane, then quickly change lanes to the right just like I learned in driving school so I can make a right turn at the end of the block.

This time though - that row of cars blocking me from my left turn. What's the rule about that? Was I supposed to drive straight into the right lane or wait at the corner for some traffic to clear?

I opted for plan A and followed some other cars into the right lane, then compulsively checked my rear view mirror and

Hello police officer!

(and thank you for not following me with sirens flashing, because I don't quite know whether you're supposed to pull over in the middle of a busy stretch of road or go a bit farther where you won't block traffic.)

I reached my Fake-Important destination, parked perfectly, chatted with another driver who has the same kind of car I do and felt like an idjit when he asked what model year mine is and all I had retained about that was, Not one of the ones affected by the recall (and then felt vindicated when he didn't realize our car has Toyota parts in it and later models have been recalled), resisted the urge to say HA, went into a store and came out again, and headed home...

... promptly messing up my timing and nearly hitting another car.

Sigh.

Back in my driveway and still cursing myself, I realized I had forgotten to bring my cell phone with me - if I had hit the other car I wouldn't have been able to call anybody in panic, even.

Then I realized I had also forgotten my housekey.

Isn't it lucky that a friend with a second set was a short walk away?