Take a driver education course or a DMV-approved pre-licensing course.
Now comes the scam. Regardless of ability, all new licensees must pay to take a state-accredited driver’s education course. Road lessons aren’t required, but everyone has to sit in a room and listen to an instructor talk for a minimum of five hours. If you’re busy, you can stretch out the five hours over a series of weeks, but most driving schools have a bite-the-bullet option for those who prefer to put the affair behind them. The goal of everyone in the room is the Magic Ticket, a certificate that verifies completion of the course. Without the number on the Magic Ticket, you can’t make an appointment for the road test. The DMV distributes booklets of them to the schools. The instructors protect the booklets as if they determine who lives and who dies.
And so it came to pass that I killed an entire Friday night biting the bullet. I honestly can’t remember the name of the place, so let’s just call it The Jean-Paul Sartre School of Driving and Confinement. My fellow lost souls were a mix of teens getting their first license, and adults who had screwed up like me. One girl in the back made my exact mistake, letting an out-of-state license expire. I thought about offering her a suicide pact, but that’s when our instructor made his entrance.
At around 6′ 2″ and 115 pounds, he was a Vaudeville act lost in time. Age had given him a leaning slouch — he didn’t so much walk as follow his head’s inertia. He was cracking wise before he even had his coat off. These were Henny Youngman-style jokes, classic setup/punchline numbers that the teens around me had never confronted. The dead silence should have been an omen, but Henny was undaunted, prodding us with “What’s the matter, never laughed before?” lines until it became clear that absolutely nothing would happen until we found him funny. Satisfied with a smattering of pity laughs, he finally turned his attention to the subject of driving. The whole room breathed a sigh of relief, but it soon became clear that the act was to continue, loosely themed around the subject of driving.
It was like waterboarding, but with jokes. We were being jokeboarded.
I checked the time on my phone. There were four hours and fifty minutes remaining.
A rolling A/V unit in the corner was our only hope for salvation, and at the end of the first hour he mercifully pushed it in front of the white board and startled fumbling with the DVD controls. Even a grisly montage of driver’s ed videos was an improvement over the comedy routine. I would have happily watched “Faces of Death” for the rest of the weekend if it meant Henny would sit down and shut the ever-loving fuck up.
However, something weird has happened to the driver’s ed video business in the years since I got my first license. They no longer try to scare the shit out of you with scenes of carnage. Now it’s all about guilt. Specifically, guilt about drag racing on Long Island. Because that’s what every one of these stories was — a tale of some guy who drove around with his friends, had his manhood challenged by another car at a red light, and wound up killing said friends in the ensuing race. Now in jail, the guy talks about how haunted he is, how every waking moment is a reminder of the pain he caused. And for some reason, it all happens in Long Island. Is there some secret epidemic of drag racing in Mineola? Frankly, the whole thing raised more questions than it answered.
After the videos, Henny seemed resigned to the fact that he wasn’t going to get a laugh without resorting to Kim Jong-Il tactics. He hunched over the desk and plowed through the rest of the syllabus, droning on without once taking his eyes from the pages. To my astonishment, the evening had become even sadder. At long last, Henny made what was likely his first good decision in a lifetime of questionable ones: He let us leave two hours early. We swarmed the desk for our Magic Tickets.
I managed to lose mine a few days later, and rushed back to the school for a new one. The girl at the front desk filled out the paperwork, and asked which instructor I’d had. “I don’t remember his name,” I said. “He made a lot of … jokes.” The girl scrunched her nose. “Oh, him. Yeah, I can’t imagine sitting through a class with that guy.”
Practice for your road test. Use your driver education certificate or pre-licensing course certificate to make an appointment for your road test by phone or on-line. Pass your road test and receive your NYS driver license.
There is something you should know about the Magic Ticket. It is only valid for one year.
I know, I know. There’s no way in hell he actually put off the road test for a whole year, right? He made his appointment the very next day? Right? Yes?
Well, no. First of all, I believe I described myself earlier as a “champion procrastinator.” It’s practically a point of pride. But more to the point, if this is to be a cautionary tale, the stakes need to be sky-high. And the stakes couldn’t possibly have been any higher than this. I made the appointment for my road test with mere weeks to spare. If I failed, there would be no escape. I would have to go back to Henny. Since that was clearly not an option, it was either pass the test, or never drive a car again.
My friend Courtney let me practice driving around Queens in her Volvo. She was digging through her purse and didn’t notice when I plowed through a red light and nearly killed us both, so hey, I guess I owe her a solid. She also volunteered to come with me to the road test. All drivers have to bring a vehicle, the person who owns that vehicle, and the vehicle’s registration. No fair stealing a car for the exam.
At the appointed time, we arrived at the test location on the last street in Astoria, where the neighborhood ends and the ConEd plant begins. There’s no building, you just pull up behind the last car in line and wait your turn. Courtney wished me luck and stepped out to the sidewalk, making way for the tiniest ball of rage ever to sling a clipboard for the DMV. She was a foot shorter than me and about eight years younger, and this was not her day. It was like someone wrapped “Jagged Little Pill” and “Straight Outta Compton” in a ball of tin foil and threw them in a microwave.
She flung the door closed and snapped her seat belt. Her pen clicked at the ready, and before I knew what was happening, we were off. Within twenty yards, she was docking points. “Didn’t check rear-view mirror. Didn’t signal.” Yikes. Not the start I was hoping for. We meandered through the neighborhood, encountering a handful of cars along the way. The course couldn’t have been easier, Miss Daisy might as well have been in the back seat. Still, the points kept coming off. “Didn’t signal soon enough. Turned too sharply.” I did my best to stay calm, but a horrifying thought laced its fingers around my mind.
I was blowing it.
The situation began to spiral out of control on a two-way side street. There was no painted line to mark the lanes, and the cars parked on both sides didn’t leave much room. Throw in the fact that Volvos are deceptively narrow, and I was pretty nervous about sideswiping the parked cars. So I gave them a wide berth. My version of “giving them a safe berth,” however, is not how Jagged Little Compton saw things.
“You’re in the wrong lane.”
“I’m what?”
“You’re in the wrong lane, come to the right.”
“I can’t come right, I’ll hit those cars.”
“Move over, you are on the wrong side of the road!”
“But … cars!”
Ever try to argue with an angry bureaucrat when your future’s on the line? Words drift away. Logic steps out for a smoke, then skips town. I sat quietly, brow furrowed and mouth hung open, driving on some alternate plane of reality. She had me parallel park, which I vaguely recall not butchering, then we returned to the starting location. She docked one last point as we drifted to a stop.
The panic drained away, and now I was the one boiling over with rage. I survived the DMV, Henny, and the streets of Queens, only to be defeated by this kid? Seriously? This wasn’t happening. This was happening to someone else, to the kid in line behind me, who was probably going to fail on the first try anyway. This was all a mistake. It had to be.
She tallied up her scratch marks, and let out a long breath through her nose. “Technically, I should fail you.” My brain queued up every curse word in English, and started searching the archives in French and German. This was going to be a torrent of vulgarity for the ages. Poets would speak of it long after the fall of civilization.
“I’m not going to. But you have to be more careful on those two-way streets.”
The torrent died in my throat. It was over. I had won. The nightmare was fading, leaving only the light of dawn. After two years and a hundred fifty bucks, I had my license back. My honest-to-God, government-approved, New York State driver’s license. Holy shit.
When I got out of the car, the blood rushed to my head. I felt dizzy. Courtney took the keys, and asked how it went. I either said “Fine” or punched her, I don’t remember which.
Q: Two vehicles approach an intersection. One of the drivers has let his license expire for no reason. His vehicle bursts into flames. Was this incident preventable?
A: Yes. The driver could have tried not being a jackass.