In high school we were jealous of those lucky enough to be born premature. Although they were biologically the same age as the rest of us, they were able to get their driver’s license from weeks to months earlier. A month of waiting in teen time equals about two eternities. I even wrote a few letters to newspapers and politicians about the gross injustice. We were given three attempts to pass the driving test. If I failed, my struggle to maintain coolness would be decimated for months, before being allowed to take the test again.
My dad drove me to where the examiners waited. He didn’t notice the examiner walking toward our car. To avoid being run over, the examiner jumped on the hood. He got off and into our car. Still shaking, he gave me a dirty look. I flunked the test before I even started.
Round Two: I finished the test. The examiner totaled my error points. Chicago, under the original Mayor Daley’s iron rule: You pay your way. Even school children knew that. I must have been absent that day. “How did I do?” I asked him.
“This is close. Very close.”
“Did I pass?”
“It’s right on the edge. By one point. I’m going have to total it up again to be sure.” I waited an inordinately long time for him to do simple arithmetic. “Close, very close,” he repeated, “It could go either way.”
Front center of hood: Indent where the driving examiner jumped on to it. Touch up paint never matched and rust always came through.
“Yes, yes…”
He extended his open palm to me. Obviously there was some protocol I wasn’t aware of. “Very close. Anything could influence it.” He rubbed his thumb and fingers together.
Suddenly insight sloshed in. I knew what he expected. “Thank you for being such a great examiner.” I shook his hand, and flunked.
Round Three: Crunch time. If I flunked, I’d be the only sixteen year old in Roger’s Park, possibly the world, without a drivers’ license. Time for desperate measures. I swallowed my male teenage pride and asked my mother to take me. The examiner got in. My mother refused to get out of the car. For the entire test she screamed at the examiner about the unfairness of the previous two rounds and how much this means to me. She told him about my saintly grandmother, that I needed to drive to daily, to bring the special soup that keeps her alive. The shriller my mom’s voice got, the faster the test went. I passed.
so many palms were greased at the drivers’ license bureau that when the secretary of state (who oversaw the dept) died, they found shoe boxes of cash stored in his house.
Damn, I’ve been shopping in the wrong places. All I ever find in my shoe boxes is shoes. Ya’ know, in elementary school, for handwriting exercises, they had us sign names on voter registration cards.
Did you have to grease a palm to get your license? How old were you when you gave your first bribe?