Driver’s Ed / Driver’s License
High School / After High School
When I was in high school, I took the school bus to school. A lot of kids took the bus. My bus was always full. Some of my fellow students had their driver’s licenses and had their own car. There was a parking lot dedicated to students who drove. It was located on the southeast side of the school.
During my senior year in high school, I decided to take Driver’s Ed. It would get me the experience I needed. It would be a good familiarization of the ins and outs of driving a car.
An added bonus was you received a certificate saying that you passed the driving portion. Then when you went to take your test with the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), you just had to take the written test.
The school had five identical cars. I can’t remember what make and model they were. The cars were always parked near the end of the parking lot.
The class was being taught by one of our coaches. I can’t remember what sport he coached. I knew him because I had taken another class with him. It was Physical Education.
The classroom wasn’t in the building. It was a portable located near the football stadium. Half of the parking lot near the stadium was cordoned off so we could use it for our training. They had markings on the pavement set up as roads with stop bars to signify stop signs. There were cones set up when we had to do something specific.
We were paired with other students on particular days. On this one day, I was paired with a girl named S. She did the driving first, while I was in the passenger seat. The teacher was outside the car shouting directions from the parking lot. All of the windows were rolled down. One day, we had to parallel park. Cones were set up on four corners of a rectangle. As luck would have it, we had a substitute teacher. And this wasn’t just a regular substitute teacher. He was a Melbourne Police Officer. He was a well-known substitute with the school for many years.
When it was my time to do the parallel parking, I got in the driver’s side. Having never attempted this before, I didn’t know what to expect. I had watched as S had done it but when it was my time, it was different. I tried to get the car into the spot but it wasn’t going so well.
The officer yells, “What are you doing Matt?!”
I think he walked up to the car and told me what I needed to do. The first time I wasn’t turning the wheel as much as I should have been. So I wasn’t getting the correct angle to enter into the spot. I think I tried my way one more time.
Then I think he shouted for me to turn the wheel more. That worked!
I needed to turn the wheel all the way to the right to set the car up to get into the parking space. The angle seemed too extreme to me but he knew what he was talking about. If I had kept doing it the way I was, I would have never made it into the spot.
I passed the course and got an A. I received the certificate showing that I had completed Driver’s Education and I could bypass the driving test.
But I didn’t get to bypass it. You’ll see why in a few minutes.
After I graduated from high school, I took a few years off before going to college.
Practice
When I decided to go to college, it was time to do some driving practice.
I would drive my Mom down the road to a small church parking lot. It was only 1.3 miles south of where we lived. It was the perfect parking lot for me to practice. They had a large parking lot. We would spend twenty minutes or so going around the parking lot.
The scenery along the way was a bunch of dwarf palmettos. These are the same palm fronds that you see on palm trees but they only grow to be 3 feet tall. They were peppered on the beachside up to the road and from the road to the river. You can see them in the photo below.
The Day of the Test
At that time, the DMV office I went to was located inside a shopping center. It was tucked back where you couldn’t even see it. There was an opening in the middle of the stores and there was a large office in there. There were a bunch of windows along the front of the office.
You were required to take the written test and the driving test to get your driver’s license.
Since so much time had elapsed since I had received the certificate from high school, I decided not to try to present it to the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) to defer the driving portion. I’m sure they would have looked at it and told me that I couldn’t use it anyway.
I passed the written test with no problems.
When it came to the driver’s test, this is where it got interesting. It was conducted at the rear of the building.
The examiner was a woman. I used my Mom’s car for the test. It was a green 1979 Mercury Bobcat. The woman got into the passenger side and gave me instructions.
She told me to treat the parking lot as a four-lane highway. As I was driving down the road at a very slow speed, a pickup truck came out of nowhere. I thought “great, now what?” It was now heading straight for me. I pulled to the left to avoid it. It was going slow but I didn’t know what their intentions were. He didn’t look like he knew where he was going. He went over into the parking spots to pass me on my right side.
Then the examiner tells me that I shouldn’t have done that. Because she said since we were imagining this was a four-lane roadway, I would have crashed into multiple vehicles.
I still think about this occasionally and think what else did she want me to do? Should I have just let that guy crash into me? Or should I have waited until he figured out what he was doing?
Next we went to the side of the building and she had me do a three-point turn. Then, she said we were done. I asked her about the parallel parking and she said I didn’t have to do that. Here I had practiced that so much and then I didn’t even have to do it. I was upset about that.
So I passed the test but I had the blemish of that guy in the truck. Otherwise, I would have received a perfect score.
Conclusion
I’d like to know if you ever took Driver’s Ed and if so, do you have any recollection of it? Anything strange or out of the ordinary happen during your driver’s license test?
Until next time, happy reading!
-Matt
Ha, amazingly dad gave me that car. The frame eventually rusted out. It surely would've been a keeper!
Hey Matt, great story! I feel like whatever indignation we receive in the drivers ed and test, if you come out with that license--it's a win!
My dad was quiet, but was known for outbursts and was a bit high strung with his babies, his autos! He had me out with his 68, Chevy Impala, matador red coupe which he kept in primo condition. It was a standard transmission, with a 3 speed on the column. We were in the parking lot of a large, thankfully empty horse racing track. All you had to avoid was the lightposts. After a few rounds with the clutch, I was feeling cocky and ready leave the parking lot for more adventuresome terrain. Dad's body language told me I had stepped past his comfort zone! I pulled up to a stop sign on a grade, facing up. Out of nowhere a vehicle foolishly pulled up behind us. My dad's fears were realized! No worries I thought. I pushed the accelerator about halfway to the floor and dropped the clutch. Gravel flying and tires probably squealing, we spun around to a hard left turn, without drifting back into that following car. The lesson pretty much ended shortly after! So drivers ed; what's not to love!
I'll see you out there, Matt!