Windy afternoon. Ford Cortina. I’m standing bitterly outside the test centre. Why? Why? I thought clutching the piece of paper peppered with Xs. Venting my fury at the world I unlocked the door and slammed it, tearing my raincoat in the process.
‘Damn it’, I shouted out to no one in particular. With face reddening and blood pressure rising as a result of the last forty-five minutes I woefully reflected over my day. That morning, I had got up nice and early to read the rules of the road three times from cover to cover. As it was only half four, I showered, had breakfast and then made my way into town to practice my driving. I had gone around the same roundabout twenty times, done nine hundred three point turns, practiced pulling out six hundred times and reversed around seventy eight corners, three times each.
So how had I failed? I wondered as I sipped my thirty-ninth espresso of the day. I replayed the driving test in my mind again and again, and then some more. I had driven up to the test centre at quarter past three, a full two hours before my test so I could recite the rules of the road back to myself. Of course, before that I had stopped at Lally’s for six espressos. I can’t function without coffee and the owner; Dick was unsurprised to see me.
‘Back for round three are we, Harry? How’s the driving coming on? Think you’ll pass today?’ he asked.
‘Not a bu-bu-bother,’ said I, ‘Ju-just need a fuh-fuh-few mu-mu-more shu-shu-shots of the bub-buh-black stuh-stuff and I’ll be graaand!’ I’m a great believer in the fact that if you say things will be ‘graaand’ then that’s how they’ll turn out.
In the coffee shop, there are several white tables with square stools around them. On the wall there are many pictures of film stars like Marlon Brando in the Godfather, On the Waterfront, a Streetcar Named Desire and the Island of Dr. Moreau. Come to think of it, I reckon Dick has a creepy obsession with Brando going on, but then again I could be wrong.
‘You know Brandy’s on Sky Movies tonight; Last Tango In Paris, my favourite movie of his. You like Brando don’t you, Harry?’ Dick said looking intensely as he gave me my coffee, ‘because if you didn’t there’d be something wrong with you, wouldn’t there?’
‘Yes, Dick’, I said somewhat sheepishly, ‘Greatest actor of his or any other generation. I’ll be watching it, don’t you worry! After successfully passing the test!’
I could just picture myself sitting on the couch with a tall chocolate mocchachino with a flake on top of some whipped cream chilling out but not to Brando. I’m more of a Woody Allen man myself and like nothing better than his comedies such as Sleeper, Manhattan, Annie Hall and Hannah and Her Sisters. I have all his films on DVD and over fifty posters of the man. There’s nothing like the Woodster when he does a freak out and has to go off to see his shrink, or go on a mad escapade to the countryside or something. If I had to go to Heaven tomorrow, I reckon God would be Woody Allen. In case you think I’m blaspheming, I don’t mean he’d actually be Woody Allen, just that he’s act like him all neurotic and all the rest of it!
Anyway I’d had enough coffee by the time I’d drank six espressos in twenty minutes and was shaking so badly that I fell off the stool and cracked my head on the floor. Luckily nobody noticed, even Dick was too busy admiring Brando as The Wild One to hear the thud! So I staggered to my feet, a little jittery, but with no harm done. Just a few pre-test nerves, I said to myself as I clambered up the steps to the toilet. Afterwards I went out and got in the Cortina so as I could scuttle off to the test centre. ‘Everything’s guh-guh-going to be alright,’ I kept saying to myself three hundred times. Sometimes you have to reassure yourself or else things don’t turn out OK.
I pulled up to the centre, narrowly missing a car that was reversing out of a space in front of me and then stopped up to read the rules of the road and recite to myself. At quarter past five, two hours later, I went in and met the tester.
‘Hello, Harry, yes?’, he said. I just nodded and mumbled something. To talk would have been impossible given the fact my leg was so wobbly. ‘I’m pleased to meet you. Please take a seat. Are you OK?’ ‘Yes’, I said and then rattled off the complete Rules of the Road in ten minutes flat. Then we went out to check the car, which was a piece of cake as I had memorised my car’s manual fifty times the previous day.
Then we went out on the road and I decided I’d like to do a few manoeuvres of my own to impress him. So when he said, ‘Please turn right here,’ I reversed back, and did a U-turn so I could reverse into the turning. I bet he liked that but a truck driver didn’t and deafened me with his horn and a string of verbal expletives. Ah, well you can’t please everybody. Then when I felt it was time to do a three-point turn, I thought the tester might like me to do one on a roundabout. Of course, I hadn’t figured that the other drivers on the roundabout wouldn’t like it and had to drive out of there at high speed to stop them breaking the car door down. ‘I guess some people never took a driving test in their lives’, I said exasperated to the driving tester who I reckoned must drink a lot of coffee too as he was shaking s o hard he could mark the test sheet.
Back at the test centre, I pulled the car up to the door, expecting a favourable result. Instead, the tester said, ‘ That’s the worst, most unsafe driving I ever saw!’
‘Buh-buh-but’, I said, I puh-puh-practiced every part of the test at least three hundred times over the luh-luh-last wuh-wuh-week. I listened to everything the duh-duh-driving instructor suh-suh-said!’
‘Well you didn’t listen to anything I said!’ the tester retorted handing me the test sheet and certificate of failure, ‘And where on earth, did you get that cup of coffee from?’
‘Duh-duh-didn’t you see the espresso machine in the bu-bu-back?’ I said gesturing to the back seat, ‘Wuh-would you like a cuh-cuh-cuppa?’
So I’m still totally mystified about the reasons for my failure, especially when I did a doughnut to go with my coffee just before parking up at the end of the test. Maybe Woody Allen knows why. He’s had a lot of rough luck in his life and I’m a bit neurotic like him. I think I’ll go home and ask him as I watch Annie Hall tonight and make a big burco of coffee before I get ten espressos to go off Dick.
© 02/2008
