How to Fail Your Driving Test

Transforming my trauma into humour (everything is copy)

I mentioned two weeks ago that I was scheduled to take my New York City driving test and that if you didn’t hear from me on it the following week, you’d know that I’d failed. I then proceeded to NOT mention it the following week and if you didn’t figure it out then, you’ve surely deduced from the title of this post, what way that test went for me.

I want to explain, but first, a little background on my driving ✨ journey✨.

I grew up in the countryside in Ireland so the application for my provisional licence went in the day I turned 17. All of my friends’ did. When you live in the country, it is a lifeline. Unless your best friend happens to live next door, there is nothing to do at home. And even if your best friend did live next door, next door was a quarter mile away. 17 was the age you got to grow out of having to ask for a lift absolutely everywhere. It meant independence! (Independence on your parent’s car and with a really high insurance premium… but an independence of sorts, nonetheless.)

This was 2002. For any younger readers, I would like to set the scene. I prepared for my theory test using… a book. There may have also been a CD-ROM…but not the internet. I took the theory test one lunchtime in a prefab in Kells, in my school uniform. The questions were as idiotically easy as they were on the theory test I took last year at the DMV. This was a genuine question in the New York test:

What effect does alcohol mixed with over-the-counter drugs have on your driving?

1. The drugs cancel out the alcohol

2. The alcohol cures your cold

3. The drugs may enhance the effect of the alcohol and impair your driving.

I shouldn’t laugh. One of the questions in Ireland was: ‘What does this road sign mean?’ And the accompanying picture was:

Photo by Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash

Then came the practical! There was a serious backlog so it was December 2003 before it rolled round and I was 18.

Now, I will say: I passed the test! I passed the test first time! I had a full licence at 18 years old! There were a few things, however, that happened immediately afterwards that should have rocked my confidence - but I was 18! I had a misplaced confidence! And, I had already (sorry to keep saying this) passed the test.

The first warning was the manner in which the examiner actually relayed to me that I’d passed. He said “The good news is, it’s Christmas, so you’ve passed”. (Huh? Am I safe to drive or not?). Then he added: “...but you obviously need a lot more practice”. I was so elated realising that I’d passed, that I consciously thought: Yeah right! What is he talking about? I have my licence! I’m never going to “practise” again. Then I drove home from the test centre and on the way home, found myself driving the wrong way down a one way street.

Later that day, I heard my mother on the phone to her sister say: “Aisling passed her test but she did that thing where she pretended not to have passed...and having been in the car with her the last few days…it wasn’t that hard to believe. But she passed! She always pulls it out of the bag for exams”. ‘Always pulls it out of the bag for exams’…is that a compliment? So much to ponder.

Despite the obvious signs that nobody (including the man that passed me) thought that I was a good driver, my confidence in driving over the years only grew. I knew I wasn’t technically the best driver but I would get you safely from a to b. I drove every day. I never had a speeding ticket. I never had a crash. Not into another car anyway. Maybe I’d touched off a pillar in one of those really tight carparks. Or scraped a wall. But Dublin lanes are so narrow! Modern cars are so big! That’s what I told myself anyway.

So, it was without any nerves that I brought myself along to a driving test centre last week in Queens.

I did briefly wonder if I was too out of practice. Would the opposite side of the road bother me? Or driving automatic? But automatic is easy! It’s like a bumping car! And I was driving those when I was 6! A few days before, I drove Dublin to Kilkenny and back and thought: yep, definitely remember how to drive. Absolutely no biggie. You got this.

I so don’t got this

I took the train and a bus out to Jamaica in Queens. It struck me, looking out the window of the bus, that I really should call this blog “Notes from Manhattan” and not “Notes from New York” because Queens was like another world. (Though it mostly does look like the neighbourhood in King of Queens, if you’re trying to picture it.)

And this was actually filmed in Jersey

My “instructor” (the person I was hiring the car from for the test) met me off the bus and said we were going to meet her other student, who had just taken his test. We walked towards a parked car and when the window rolled down, she asked him how it went. He looked sheepish and said he definitely failed because he mounted the kerb. I began to back away because he was clearly embarrassed by my presence and also because the amount of times he used the phrase “mounted the kerb” was starting to give me anxiety. I was half afraid I’d catch his dismal driving abilities simply by being in his proximity. Though I admit, I did take some confidence from the fact that he looked like an absolute space cadet and like someone who WOULD mount the kerb while driving.

He went on his merry way at last and the instructor and I got into the car and joined the queue of cars waiting for their test. While we wait, she tells me how the scoring system works and how to adjust the mirrors, how to start the car, where the (automatic) gear stick is. Grand. I’m feeling good. We’re not in line that long but long enough for me to learn, with almost no probing from myself, that she is anti-vax and homeschools her kids.

Photo by Carson Masterson on Unsplash

We get to the top of the line and the examiner checks my learner permit and I sign my name. I notice a lot of Fs after names above me and wonder was I meant to fill in my gender. Then I realise they are not females, they are all fails, and it dawns on me this might not be as idiot-proof as I had thought.

I get into the driver seat for the first time and the examiner says I can start the car. Despite the fact that I had explicitly asked the instructor how to start the car mere minutes ago, I press the parking button repeatedly wondering why it won’t start until I remember it is the much more obvious ‘power button’, which had been pointed out to me, that is the ignition.

OK, we’re all G. Still. I’m calm. He knows this isn’t my car, no biggie.

But from the moment I pulled out, I would say…I would say things went to shit. I’ll try keep it to the high points (because there are so many points) but for starters, I’m driving along thinking “Shit did I check my mirrors?” then spend the next few minutes, like a bobble-headed dog, checking every mirror so much I realise I’m never looking at the road. So then I look at the road for ages until I remember :“Shit, the mirrors!”.

Yeah, it wasn’t great at all overall.

The absolute stand out moments were when I noticed the car was slowing down but knew I hadn’t applied the brake and I realised the examiner had deployed the emergency brake. You know, that moment wasn’t even when I realised it was game over. I had realised long before that. It was when I was asked to parallel park and I (very confidently) parked the car. Right as I finished, I turned to the examiner looking for his approval on a job well done, when he goes “You’re on the kerb”.

“Excuse me?”, I said (all ‘Hmmm? What did you say??’)

and he goes “You’re on the sidewalk ma’am” - that…that was when I knew I absolutely was not getting my New York state driver’s licence that day.

We returned to the instructor and she gave me a questioning thumbs up, the same way she had done to the previous space cadet except I’m the space cadet now and it was my turn to say “No…I mounted the kerb”. She asked me how my three point turn went and I told her I never got asked to do a three point turn and she said “OK yeah you definitely failed”.

ARRRRRRGGGGGHHHH…it is so singularly humiliating!!!! To be tested on something you’ve been doing for 20+ years and to be told categorically that you are not up to scratch. Also, if you could see the absolute lunatics driving the roads of New York City…you’re telling me I fall below THAT standard???? It’s like someone showing up to review your parenting and deeming you unqualified but you’re like “Yeah well, I’ve been doing it for years, thank you very much, and now I’m going to return to Ireland and continue to do it there”. But they plough on with their review regardless: “Hmm automatic disqualification for the screen time before two years old with extra demerits for: 1. not having, at all times, endless levels of patience and 2. Not being able to remember in the moment those stupid fucking gentle parenting scripts”!!!!!!!!!!

And breathe.

I had loads to do but thought failing my driving test was enough of an achievement for one day. I took the E train, and then the F, to Madison Street in Chinatown and put my name down for the Golden Diner. They told me there’d be a 35 minute wait and I planned to wander the neighbourhood to kill time but it started to pour, so I settled myself up in the window seat of bánh by Lauren’s across the street and ordered a Vietnamese coffee and took in the view.

The coffee

The view

On Madison Street

Very different people-watching to the West Village though equally homogenous. Everyone that passed by in this corner of Manhattan was mask-wearing, elderly and Chinese - pushing either a walker or a sholley.

I got the text that my table was ready and I took my seat at the bar, ordered Korean fried chicken wings, Diet Coke and a single honey butter pancake and waited. And then the wings arrived and I ate half and then the pancake…oh my god, the pancake. You are simply not ready for how sumptuously delicious it is. (I just paused to hold my hands to my nose in prayer as I remember it).

Golden Diner

The perfect commiseration meal.

I didn’t want to drive in America anyway.