Driver’s saga: The futile quest for a Washington driver’s license - Part 2
Episode I: The Phantom Thief
Residing in the Treasure Valley, a flat expanse of suburban desert at the mouth of Boise Idaho, a mom drove her young padawans constantly. The route to school clocked in at 13 miles, then to work added 27 miles, and running it back added another 40 miles. Adding in grocery runs, soccer practices, and family functions, the busy mom easily piled 100 miles onto the odometer everyday.
But - the beginning of an advertisement - the red Honda CRV got 23 miles to the gallon, and an even more impressive 30 mpg on the highway. The Honda CRV can comfortably seat a family of four plus a tag-along while providing ample trunk space. See your local Honda dealer if you are looking to upgrade your family wheels. “Honda. The Olive Garden of the road.”
Despite captaining the fuel-efficient digs, for reasons only an over-driven parent can understand, the mom enrolled the padawan senior in driving school the moment he became eligible. In Idaho, don’t think too much on the craziness of this, but, someone can get their permit at 14 and their license at 14 and a half. It’s the kind of state where parallel parking isn’t taught, but maneuvering around an on-road tractors is.
Cut to driving school, the padawan senior found himself seated in front of a portable building with twenty other prospective drivers. In a sense, he was the chosen one for his family, tasked with bringing balance to the overburdened gas foot of prior generations.
He rose to the challenge. The padawan senior aced the class and passed his driving credentials, even despite missing the highway driving session. No, he didn’t know how to parallel park, or have experience driving on the highway, but yes, he did know how to maneuver around an on-road tractor - and that was enough! By his freshman year of high school, after six months of supervised driving, the padawan was a fully licensed driver.
His parents bought an ancient Toyota Landcruiser for $500 so the padawan senior could puddle jump between all his events. These events included JV cross country meets, frisbee golf meetups, and ½ priced Sonic shake nights - so obviously of vital importance. While technically not his car, but more a family car, the hulking green monster got negative 10 miles to the gallon (other cars burnt fuel just looking at it), and it positioned the padawan 10 feet above the ground (in the commander position of the essentially bulletproof haul). The tank boosted the padawan’s social status by fifty points, and proved useful for lugging around the family horse, Chuck. For a bit, padawan junior dabbled in dark arts of 4H, so the Landcruiser horsepower was needed to transport Chuck between events.
Other than the horrid gas mileage, things were good. Balance had been restored to the gas pedal, and the mom finally had rest. And then, someone stole the car.
It was a dark and stormy Sunday. Not stormy as in the weather, but stormy as in, the Redskins didn’t have a bye week, so they probably were going to lose that day. Quick background, the family, hailing from the DC area, hinged their Sunday happiness to the dismal football team. A loss usually resulted in a lethargic, moping evening. The actual weather that day was September blue skies and warm.
The mom and the driving padawan senior, late for church, quickly parked the car in the back of the parking lot and jogged into the sanctuary. In a tragic rush of events, not only did they forget to lock the car, but they forgot the keys in the car, visibly available in the middle counsel. It’s one of those events where, in hindsight, you realize that you made two mistakes.
In fairness to the protagonists though, Idaho is a very safe state, it was a church parking lot, the locks jammed when you tried to lock anyways, the parking lot had a patrolling security guard, and - no one is going to steal the ugly looking rover when there are 200 better options, right?
After the enlightening service (or, disheartening first quarter if you were distracted monitoring football on your phone instead) the mother and padawan were confused. When searching for the car, they couldn’t find it. Hadn’t they parked right here? What’s going on? For half an hour, convinced they didn’t remember, the mom and padawan wandered the parking lot in vain. Then they made the 911 call.
When the cop arrived, it drew the attention of the pastor and the security guard. The mother explained the situation to the group. Upon hearing the news, the pastor passive-aggressively threw blame onto the security guard, who unfortunately was literally two hours into his first day on the job. The cop took down the info, then radioed the boys back at the station. They’d be in contact if “anything came up”. His demeaner suggested that he wasn’t too invested in the outcome of the robbery.
Soon, the onlookers returned to their cars, the pastor and security guard disappeared for a private talk, and the cop left. The mother and padawan remained, solemnly waiting for their ride home.
Since the car itself was so little valued, it was self-insured. The only player with a financial stake in the game was padawan junior, who left her school textbooks in the car. Oddly enough, the fine for misplacing those was about $100.
Three days passed (it may have been shorter, but three days seems like the dramatically correct amount of time), and the cop called back. They’d found the Landcruiser, parked in someone’s driveway near the church. If the family wanted it, they now had the location. The father of the family, with no help from the authorities, ventured out with a spare key and reclaimed the stolen property right off the lot. Vigilante justice had been served.
Reconvening back at home, when the family inspected the car, they noted the following abnormalities: 1) The car had been given a fresh coat of paint. Previously displaying a rusting green color, it somehow, for whatever reason, had been restored back to a better color. 2) The gas money had been stolen and replaced with used cigarettes. This proved somewhat jarring since it was up-in-your-face proof that someone had invaded the family's personal space. Also, gas is expensive so the loss of funds sucked. 3) The ski rack on the top had been stolen, along with padawan junior’s backpack. 4) The phantom thief had left a hammer, which the family still uses to this day.
All-in-all, considering the new hammer and new paint coat, the family came out even in the three day trade. Except padawan junior. She had to pay the $100 dollars for the lost textbook. #SucksToSuck
Episode II: Attack from Behind
Over the next few years, the padawan senior crashed twice, once with the Landcruiser and once with a loaner Ford Explorer. In both instances something struck him from behind, so we can’t place blame on the teenage shoulders. Off the record, maybe the young blood was driving in reverse during the first impact.
It was late Saturday night. A gang consisting of the young blood, his cousin, best friend, and youth pastor had just wasted their money seeing the fourth Transformers movie. The dumpster-fire movie scored a 17% on rotten tomatoes. Even despite viewing the movie at the cheap-seats theater, the group wanted their money back. Encapsulating the experience well, a top critic describes the movie as, “a visceral assault on your senses and intellect. I was just waiting for the movie to end.”
After piling their negative opinions on the movie, the group said their goodbyes. The young blood, driving the green monster, gave his cousin and best friend a ride home. Backing out the movie theater parking lot - all of a sudden - a rogue street light jumped out of nowhere into the path of the Landcruiser. The best friend, the only one to have seen the hazard beforehand, screamed to the driver to stop. But, all too fast to make a good decision, the Landcruiser smashed into the concrete base of the streetlight. The driver and two passengers gave the pole a light whiplash in acknowledgement.
After collecting themselves and stretching their necks, everyone got out to see the damage. The youth pastor, having witnessed the event from the sidelights, reconvened with the boys. Surprisingly the damage wasn’t bad - just a large bent in the bummer of the car. And because the car was so old anyways, the damage sort of fit the personality of the car, i.e., less of an eyesore and more of a cool scar.
The youth pastor confirmed everyone was ok, gave empathy by reflecting on his past car mishaps, and then sent everyone on their way. The young blood, embarrassed by the mistake, quickly dropped off his cousin and best friend after a quiet car ride home. When he arrived home himself, he confronted his parents who already knew about the minor crash. Apparently news travels fast. The parents reassured the young blood that everything was ok - mistakes happen and no was hurt. Plus, the car only had a small dent, nothing to get overworked about.
A few years later, the young blood crashed again; this time the car was totaled
During the summer after his sophomore year of college, the young blood secured an internship near his hometown. The company, a large healthcare provider in Idaho, officially didn’t have an actuarial intern position available, or even a program for that matter, but the young blood convinced them in a letter to set something up. It took 25 minutes to drive from Nampa to the picturesque campus in Meridian.
[A quick aside by the author, standing up on his soapbox to defend an issue that no one cares about and no one has brought up:] For those unfamiliar, Nampa and Meridian aren’t suburbs of Boise; they’re their own towns. Maybe coming as a shock: Idaho has other cities besides Boise. Meridian is the 2nd largest city in Idaho, and Nampa is the 3rd largest. If you add their populations (along with some suspect rounding), the sum exceeds that of Boise. Both cities have significant Wikipedia pages, so yeah, they’re definitely independent towns.
Anyways driving home one day, from Meridian to Nampa, the young blood stopped at a stoplight, because, you know, it’s the law. Given the busy traffic, the stoplight created an abnormally long line of cars back up the inner city road. It was a one lane road in both directions with a dirt shoulder and houses past that.
He was driving an old Ford Explorer, loaned from his aunt and uncle. Somewhere in the time that he’d been away for college, the Landcruiser had died. The green monster passed peacefully, dying in its sleep after living a long eventful life. The Explorer, which was fully insured, had all the luxuries a young blood would want - radio and air conditioning. Usually the young blood listened to NPR or the generic pop station which… KAPOW!
A large truck careened into the Explorer. The inattentive driver honked the moment before, and the young blood saw the truck’s grill in the rearview mirror before the smash. The truck hit the standstill Explorer at 20 or 30 miles per hour, 40 if we’re being dramatic. The young blood should have been smashed in between the car in front of him, but through divine intervention, the Explorer veered right into the dirt path and slid past five or so cars before being caught by slammed brakes.
The young blood wobbled out, uninjured but a bit dazed. The truck’s driver, an older gentleman with a kind face, got out himself after shaking away his shock. Other drivers got out themselves to help with the situation. Most vocally, a lawyer lady who advised the young blood not to admit fault and call the cops even if they’d been called already. Obviously it would be hard-pressed to convince anyone that this was the young blood’s fault. The older gentleman repeatedly apologized, saying he’d been distracted by hooligans playing in a nearby irrigation ditch. The young blood had seen the swimmers also, so he understood.
He called the cops. He called his parents. Then he waited. The back of the Explorer had been completely smashed in. The insurance company would eventually classify the vehicle as totaled. Luckily the collision occurred near the end of his internship, so the young blood could catch rides until then, and even more lucky, the insurance payout was more than what his aunt and uncle had paid for the car. After it all, having been victim to whiplash for the second time now, the young blood went to a chiropractor to double check everything was ok.
[Maybe a poor resolution to an uneventful story ending,] The chiropractor told him that his right leg was slightly longer than his left leg. To fix the problem, it would require weekly sessions. The young blood didn’t see how this related to the whiplash problem - hypothesizing maybe he was being upsold for problems that he didn’t have or problems that didn’t matter - so he didn’t return.
Episode III: Antiquation of the Automobile
Between his summer internship and college graduation, the young blood drove less and less. All students like, he mostly buried himself in his studies. When he needed to travel, he took a bus or a plane, or walked, or called his best friend to shuttle him between locations. He wouldn’t drive for years to come, during which time his license would expire. The student’s driving life was on hold for the time being.
***
As you can see, I ran out of steam for Episode III. I don’t have many driving stories at that point in my life, so there’s not much to tell. I just wasn’t on the road. Also, notice how these stories don’t relate to the title of the post, about me getting a Washington driver’s license. A title that doesn’t relate to the story’s content is dumb, but it does make me laugh. I’ll talk about the real story next; however, I won’t be for at least two weeks. Next week I’m retaking the Final Assessment. Read the debacle here if you want to see how the first run-through went.
