quislibet | Road test

So at the excessively belated age of 34 I am now legally allowed to drive a car all by my self.

My dad waited until he was in his 50s, though, so I'm ahead of the game.

Yesterday morning J. and I awoke too early so we could take the car into town before rush hour and parked it at Alewife Station ca. 7:30 A.M. I came into work, having nothing better to do, and did stuff until after lunch. The plan was that I would meet J. back at Alewife, then we'd proceed to the Watertown Mall, where the Watertown Registry of Motor Vehicles is located (this being the only place where I could get a road test appointment in before my permit expired); not ever having driven in Watertown before, I would then pilot our mighty Cavalier Wagon through the nearby streets.

Alas! 'Twas not to be, for I had in my folly counted on the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority to deliver me to Alewife Station in a timely manner. Those of you who are forced into the MBTA's fell clutches on a regular basis may scoff, but perhaps even you will be surprised to learn that the two legs of that journey were each preceded by a 20-minute wait for service.

This sum of nearly three quarters of an hour ate up all putative practice time. It also took me from merely butterfly-stomached to downright sick with anger and frustration. Never, dear friends, ride the T on a day when you'd like to remain fairly calm.

Well.

At last I met J. at the turnstyles at Alewife (such an odd name, Alewife), where she had been waiting not only the amount of time I had been delayed but also a goodly extra sum, having arrived early. She drove us to Watertown (so that I could use the time to relax a little) and, after a few further delays caused by inadequate directions, arrived at the RMV the requisite 15 minutes before my appointment.

Naturally, there was a long line out the door into the hallways of the mall. ("In my fear of bureacracy I worry that I won't get to the Customer Service Desk before my appointment and will be counted late, have to forfeit the appointment, be charged for it anyway, and then have to renew my permit and make a new appointment." "Don't worry," she said; "that won't happen, and if it does we'll raise a ruckus.") Those 15 minutes were nearly up before I'd even really entered the RMV proper. Soon, it was 3, the Appointed Hour, and I was still in line. Then a State Trooper called in a loud voice, "Last Call for Road Test Appointments!", gave the crowd a cursory glance, and then moved into a small room and made to shut the door. I dashed over, proclaiming that I had indeed arrived for this very reason.

"You're late," the Trooper snapped.

I protested I had in fact been in line this whole time, whereupon she sneered something to the effect that all the other five people waiting in line specifically for 3-o'clock appointments had been able to hear her perfectly when she called for road testers, but she reluctantly permitted me to join them.

In the end, the Trooper turned out, to my surprise, after our poor start, to be the soul of kindness, and the test wasn't hard at all, and she chided me only gently when I did not heed a Stop sign (partly obscured by foliage); that this did not cause me to fail the test immediately says much about driving in this state. She signed the appropriate papers, and I returned inside the mall to deposit it with the appropriate clerk along with three ATM-fresh Jacksons, and then we went out for ice cream, waited out rush hour at Diesel Cafe in Somerville, and finally decided to stay in the area for dinner, during which we glimpsed and addressed