Thursday,
December 20, 2001

Death Gets a License

The heavens have opened. The angels have sung. The earth has moved, the miracle has occurred.

Lyndon is now a licensed driver, courtesy of the great state of Texas. As he said, only in half-jest, "It's a mistake, Mellie, it's a mistake!"

Quite frankly, I didn't think he'd passed at first. The way the driving test is set up in Texas, you have to parallel park first, then go out on the actual course (which in his case was a nearby neighborhood). The first time he took the test, he'd flunked the parallel parking by hitting the curb, so it was a tense moment -- I ducked behind a nearby Goodwill drop-odd trailer and stared off into the distance because I couldn't bear to watch. You need to remember that we've been driving almost every night this week, I rented an automatic Dodge Stratus (a horrible boat of a car that reeked of cigarette smoke even after liberal dousing with Febreeze) on Tuesday specifically so that he wouldn't have to worry about shifting, and we'd spent two hours working on parallel parking last night, so it's understandable that I was on pins and needles, not to mention the fact that Lyndon was wound up tighter than an E on first string.

After counting down for a minute, I peeked out and saw that he was still in the PP area, reversing into the spot again. Arrgh. Back behind the Goodwill trailer for another minute. When I checked again, I saw the silver Stratus heading out of the parking lot for the next part of the test, and shouted, "YES!" I wasn't worried about the actual driving part -- if he got past the PP section, I knew he could ace the rest of it.

Of course, he scared me a bit at first -- the Stratus pulled back into the parking lot ten minutes later, the testing officer chatted with Lyndon for a moment and got him to sign something, then got out of the car and waved me over. From the flat look on his face, I thought that he'd failed.

"Well, it appears that I'm a licensed driver in the state of Texas," he murmured.

"What?"

He repeated it, and I whooped and kissed him. Turns out he was just in a minor state of shock at passing, as he'd flunked the PP test again due to bad positioning. However, the officer said, his observational skills were excellent and he'd only made one minor mistake on the course, so he passed the overall coursem and was eligible for a license. He headed off to the office to get his picture taken for the card, and I waited in the car, gleefully anticipating the car shopping that would occur when we got back and planning my driving-free weekends from now on.

The amusing part was in the end, when I saw him exiting the office building and noticed he had two little tufts of hair sticking out on either side of his head which made him look like a horned owl or a very cheerful devil, take your pick. When I mentioned this, he looked in the rear view mirror and groaned. "Oh, man -- that's what's gonna be on my picture ID from now on!" he said.

Me, I thought it was kinda appropriate. Death is back on the roads, people -- be afraid, be VERY afraid. . .