Hey all you bureaucratic fat-cats down at the DMV!
Yeah, that’s right, I got a bone to pick with you…
It had fiasco written all over it from the start. Then again, it wouldn’t be a trip to the DMV if there isn’t at least some level of extraneous drama, now would it?
You see, normally for a Kansas teenager, the mere act of turning 16 would be enough to earn one’s driver’s license. Heck, we had all been unofficially driving for 5+ years at that point–or at least those of us had the privilege of being born into a state of child lab–er, I mean to say “the privilege of growing up on a farm.”
So in that sense, yes, I was a “normal” Kansas teenager. Double heck–I had been driving1My definition of “driving” here is rather broad, up to and including sitting on a parent’s lap and being allowed to steer while they ran the pedals. for 10 years by the time my Sweet Sixteen rolled around.
Yet, lo and behold, there I was almost 3 months after my birthday, and I was still undocumented as the day I was born. “Why?” you may ask?
Because just like the rest of my life, the simple task of passing a major life milestone necessitated an overly complicated plot line for a back story. Noooo, it just couldn’t be straightforward, now could it?
I should have taken Driver’s Ed the summer after 8th grade alongside my other Kansan colleagues. I should have been handed my Learner’s Permit long before that summer was over. And I should have been able to watch that Learner’s Permit magically transform into a bona fide Driver’s License right before my very eyes on my 16th birthday.
The problem? Though I was living in Kansas that particular summer, I was technically a citizen of California, at least in the eyes of the law. That was the Summer of the Custody Battle of ’94, and it wasn’t until that Battle ended in early August when I would officially be a tax-paying Kansan. But by that time, well, I had already missed the boat. And by “boat,” I mean that land-yacht Chevy Suburban that U.S.D. 217 used for their Driver’s Ed classes.
Well, you can see that my teen life was already complicated enough between the custody battle and being denied the full trappings of a Learner’s Permit. And, in the words that make absolutely no sense to anybody who has ever lived in Kansas, “it all just went downhill from there…”
Where to start, where to start? Oh, how about scheduling? The whole reason that I was 16.25 years old and still license-less was because of the “2-4pm, every-other-Thursday” hours that the nearest DMV offered for driving tests. So the first appointment I could make was directly correlated to the first day I wouldn’t be stuck in school at that oddly specific time frame: i.e. Spring Break.
It’s not like I would have been in Cancun otherwise. But still, I had fields to plow–and no, that is not a sexual euphemism–and a trip to Hugoton to take my DL test was going to annoyingly eat into my plowing productivity.
Putting our farming grievances aside, Dad dutifuly pulled my ass off the tractor that fateful day and chauffeured me to my appointment in my step-mom’s hyper-futuristic Eagle Vision.2Because y’all know that the Eagle Vision was the bomb-diggity of cars back in that day! But when we showed up to the Steven’s County Department of Transportation–ok, I confess that in B.F. Egypt-Middle-of-Nowhere Kansas we weren’t even sophisticated enough to have a proper DMV–we ran into an even more serious issue: identity fraud.
Well, maybe not so much as “fraud” as “parental negligence:” no one seemed to really know what my Social Security Number was. I have no idea where the ----- Dad got that number from, but it sure wasn’t mine. Unless…unless they gave out the same number to all Roberts born in Kansas in 1980? Well, at least me and this other guy had that much in common, which may have just been a coincidence. But, no, I was not that Robert, the rightful owner of what I had thereforeto thought to be my SSN.
Somehow, some way, between Dad and the DOT, they eventually figured out my correct number, but in the interim there was a moment there where I truly wondered if I had been swapped at birth…or maybe I had got lost in the system and was, as they say “undocumented”…or was I perhaps a clone, only being grown so the Original Me could harvest me for my body organs as needed…oh, how my mind digressed.
Eventually, after acing the written and eye exam portions of the whole charade, I got my opportunity to go on the World’s Most Awkward Date with a certified driving instructor (famously trained in all things automobile). Yes, I speak of none other than The Road Test.
Of course I was nervous, but for the most part I felt like I was actually kinda nailing it. Until…
Okay, so first you need to understand that Hugoton was literally a “One Stoplight” town. And I was doing just fine until we got to The Stoplight, and I had to make a left turn onto Main.
Light turned green. I paused. I looked. I waited. Oncoming traffic came on, and then finally, it was all clear.
But as I turned left, I took it a little too wide. And I realized halfway through the turn: “Aw fudge, I’m turning into the far lane. I’m pretty sure I’m supposed to be turning into the near lane.” [In audio slow-mo:] “Nooooooooooo!”
A millisecond later my inner monologue continued: “Well shit, if I correct it now, I would have to swerve hard to make it to the proper lane, and it would be, as the youths say, ‘totes obvs’ to Mr. Instructor that I had done ----- up.”
“Best to just play it cool and hope he didn’t notice,” I mumbled to myself, as I pretended like I was supposed to do what I had just done…
“Okay, nice job parallel parking. Now just release the parking brake, and we’ll head back to the headquarters. and wrap up the paperwork!”
Oh my god, I couldn’t believe it. Despite my turn-lane screw-up, it looked like I was home-free and bound to be licensed within the hour.
The “Can You Parallel Park/Do You Know Where The Parking Brake Is?” tests were the last items on that clipboard-carrying melonfarmer‘s checklist, and I had aced both of those with flying colors. Nothing was going to stop me now.
With the bravado and hubris of someone who had just kicked some ass and taken some names, I reached down to pull the parking brake release…only to come up empty-handed.
“The fu—?!? What? How? Where? Why is the brake release not here???”
“Son, if we can get going? We need to get back to HQ before they close up shop.”
“Um, yeah, about that…”
It was dawning on me that I had never actually used the parking brake release handle on that car before, and had just assumed it would be in the same spot as in every other vehicle that I had ever been in.
But this fancy-ass, hyper-futuristic Eagle Vision? I guess they forgot that basic part when they were designing their sweet ride. Because it simply did not exist.
And thus, with the parking brake firmly stuck in place, I found myself firmly stuck in a very embarrassing situation. So embarrassing, in fact, that I did the most embarrassing thing a man could do in that moment: ask another, more knowledgeable, man for help.
“Um…so I kinda can’t find the release. Would you be able to help me out here?” I humbly petitioned Mr. Instructor.
“SIGH. Okay, swap seats with me and I’ll help you out of this pickle.”
Well, it turned out Mr. Expert couldn’t figure out the riddle any better than I could:
“Oh, uh, yeah. That is odd. The release handle should be right here. Yet it isn’t…”
“Wait, how do you not know this??? Aw man, now we’re really screwed!”
We then proceeded to turn that sweet, sweet ’94 Eagle Vision inside out and upside down searching for some release mechanism of any kind, sadly all to no avail.
We were growing ever more desperate by the minute…
So desperate, in fact, that we then collectively did the most embarrassing thing a grown-ass man and a half-ass teenage boy could do: we consulted the Owner’s Manual.
I mean, have we no pride?!?
After a good 10-15 minutes of toiling in absurd futility, our sacrificial act seemed to pay handsome divedends when we came across this nugget of wisdom: “To release the emergency break, slightly angle your toe forward as you depress it further a second time.”
We looked quizzically at each other.
“What the heck does that even mean?”
“Aw, hell if I know.”
It was totes obvs that neither of us gave a shit at that point in time and just wanted to get on with our lives.
Surprisingly, it only took us about another 5 minutes of collective effort to decipher the true meaning of that cryptic message and to get the ----- thing finally released.
Needless to say, we had both been so utterly emasculated by that animate object that neither of us said not a word the rest of the way back to HQ…
“You are allowed to get penalized up to 40 points and still pass. That little stunt you pulled turning left at The Stoplight–yes, I saw you ----- that up from a mile away–that only cost you 36 points…”
Finally safe and sound back at HQ, Mr. Expert Instructor was going over the results of the road test with me.
“Whew! That was close! Well, all that matters is that I passed on my first try and won’t have to wait until summer to come back and take the test again…” I didn’t see the need to wait any longer for my hard-earned victory lap.
“…and I had to knock off 5 points for not knowing how to release the parking brake.”
“But you didn’t either!”
“Erm, I wasn’t the one being tested…”
“Wait, then that means–38, 39, 40, 41,42…awww ----- …”
“Sorry son, you failed…”
The point of the story is that I hereby call for the immediate drafting of and subsequent passing of by the Kansas State Legislature, SB42–also known as Robert’s Law–a bill “outlawing any testing relating to and/or pertaining to knowledge of the application of and/or the mechanisms of release of vehicular parking brakes, in the course of issuing driving identifications and permits by the great state of Kansas.”
Let me reiterate that last part: this is Kansas, for fuck’s sake. We FlatLanders have no need for your fancy elitist contraptions, and it’s a violation of our children’s dignity to be tested such offensive and anti-anti-gradientist concepts!
So next time some pompous elevated-living ass-hat tries to use the phrase “It’s all downhill from here,” do just like my stepmom’s Eagle Vision did that fateful March day in 1997, and don’t you dare budge an inch from where you’ve been firmly-yet-involuntarily planted.
Nothing is “downhill from here” around here, you bunghole…
#HiPlainsPride #FunkYoMountains #ICantBelieveIFailedMyDriversTestOverSuchAUselessPieceOfKnowledge #TheWholePremiseOfThisPieceIsABitIronicGivenThatManyEastCoastLiberalFolkLiveInACoastalPlain
Content created on 28/29/30 January 2022 (Fri/Sat/Sun)
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