Driven to Drive

Has anyone seen this girl?  Armed with a fistful of birthday cash and a newly minted driver's license, I swear I've hardly seen her since the ride home from the examination station.

Amanda took her driver's test yesterday, one the heels of two days of snow and wind, and in an unfamiliar location (because a small town an hour's drive from ours is where she could get in when 60 days before her birthday she went online to make the appointment) and she passed.  What's more, we both survived the day.  That is saying something.

I signed her out of school with extra, extra time to make it to the driver's test, because the weather, and, therefore, the road conditions, had been horrendous.  Also, it's one of those events for which you want to allow a little padding.  When we got to the town, Amanda started touring city blocks, looking for parking lots to practice her 90-degree back-in (or something like that, it's called.)  The practice did not go well, and she was getting more upset as I was getting more nauseated.  I gave the standard advice: Stop freaking out-- you're fine, and we continued on to what my daughter understood to be the testing site, the courthouse.  That wasn't it.  But there was a sign posted on the door with directions to the licensing bureau, about six blocks away, so we went there.  That wasn't it, either.  Our nearly hour-long head start had by this time dwindled to five minutes and everyone involved was on the edge of hysteria.  As the clerk at the second stop mused, "Let's see... how can I direct you..." I said, "Never mind-- we'll put it in the phone," and I did an about-face, flashing a grade two glare in the direction of the dingbat daughter.  It was enough to express my annoyance with her lack of preparedness (as well as my annoyance with my misplaced trust in her) but not enough to make the already nervous test subject come totally unglued.

We made it to the actual testing site with two minutes to spare.  The 100-year-old examiner was the only human in the building, and he barely fit the description.  I handed over my firstborn to him and sat down to pray.  Less than five minutes later, Amanda was back.  She had forgotten an essential piece of paperwork in her backpack.  Heaven help us.  He may not have displayed much personality, but the driving dude clearly had patience-- and mercy.

Amanda passed her test, according to the little carbon-copy form she clutched upon her return.  The tester grunted at me.  We left.

I drove home.

She offered to take Elisabeth to her CrossFit class, as well as anything else that needed doing.  Today was more of the same.  Amanda went to the bank and to a store.  She's already been through the drive-thru.  I am sure the novelty will wear off... And, in all actuality, I am thankful.  I'm nervous, but I'm thankful.  I have so far dubbed this school year The Year of Waiting.  It seems all the Krinkeland kids, with all their interests and activities, have to be in different places on the same days at the same times.  And be picked up from different places on the same days at the same times.  Someone is always waiting.

So that's going to be a definite benefit of having another driver: Amanda will not be waiting.  Wherever she is, she's gotten herself there.