Yes, it’s true!  I’m finally driving in California.  Or starting to, anyway.  And it’s going pretty well.  I mean, I did just fail the driving test, but let’s take it chronologically.

I came back to California a week early to get on top of my driving.  By driving I mean my inability to drive.  Life without a car in California is pretty miserable.  Actually, it’s really miserable.  I’ve basically been relying on 7-Eleven (think a gas station store) and Amazon (online retailer) for groceries in the past year.  Yes, I did get a ride to the supermarket every now and then from somebody, but nothing reliable, so I’d buy cereal and granola bars online, milk and toast bread (you know, that pre-sliced slimy thing that comes in a plastic bag) at 7-Eleven.  I had a meal plan for the school cafeteria, and went in to sneaks out a backpack full of fruit. Yes, pretty miserable.  Most people (those with cars) think of eating something, hop into their car, and twenty minutes later they’re sitting on their couch, munching on it.

As miserable as my private life was without a car (also, very limited and generally sucky options for going to see movies on my own, where seeing a two-hour movie at a mall 3 miles away translates into a half-day trip etc), this semester gives me a real reason to get a car I’m producing my junior-year film, and that is pretty impossible to do without a car (see more in the following post).

A few days after I got here, I passed my permit test (that’s a written test that lets me drive with supervision by somebody with a valid CA license– for most people this means they get to drive with their parents for practice), and I signed up for driving school.

I went through their standard package of six hours of driving (it’s meant to teach the kids the basics while they practice with their parents/complement what their parents show them).  To my surprise, I got back into driving pretty fast, and I thing I got a good hang of it now, considering that I got my license over two years ago and basically haven’t driven since.

Automatic transmission (which is the norm here) definitely makes things easier.  At first, I felt like “I wanna get a manual, because it’s so cool and European – like me! – and I already learned how to drive it.”  But then I realized how much easier my life will be with an automatic.  Driving around where I live and go to school is all about 4-way stop intersections.  As an inexperienced and unconfident driver, I decided that I did not wanna do the whole manual speil on every corner, that if the car did that for me, I’d be a lot more comfortable driving.  And that turned out to be the truth.  So even after the fairly short 6 hours, I feel very comfortable behind the wheel.

So I made an appointment for the driving test.  I went for a ride before it around the DMV I was being tested at (Westminster, upon my instructor’s recommendation).  I felt good, comfortable, in control.  Pretty early on in my test, I stopped at a stop sign at an intersection that only had stop signs for one of the roads.  I looked, and there weren’t any cars coming.  I enter the intersection and boom, there’s a car coming from the side with no stop sign.  He stops at a very safe distance, as he sees me, and I stop as I see him (I don’t know where he came from).  Nothing really happened (and these things happen all the time when people drive normally), but the DMV considers “a critical error,” i.e. one that should fail me on the spot.  I knew that right then and there.  My examiner continues to direct me around the neighborhood, and I drive for quite a while.  I’m starting to think she’ll let it slide.  She navigates me back to the DMV parking lot.  And she fails me.

I definitely deserved it, but her behavior was odd.  My instructor thought so too – in fact, he thought I had passed, based solely on how long I was out driving.

It sucks.  Had I passed, I would have my car right this moment.

But well, this happens.  It doesn’t mean I’m forever incapable of driving, it just means I failed a test.  People fail it every now and then – that’s why it’s a test.  And then people pass the next time around and drive around freely and happily, mutually agreeing to break some of the rules that the test is based on.  I have another appointment for this coming Thursday, and I’m confident I will pass – and buy my car next weekend!