Driving Tests
It wasn’t quite love at first sight but it was pretty damn close. Sitting in the car, I watched as the woman – she was black, appeared to be in her 50s – approached.
I had a good feeling; borne of desperation, yes, but still good. I really needed her on my side.
It had been about six weeks since Amy and I arrived in Oregon from New York where I had prided myself on not having a driver’s license. I was not shy about telling people that I believed that if I couldn’t get there by subway, it probably wasn’t worth going to. The truth probably had more to do with laziness but that’s not as funny.
So, there I was, a 41-year-old transplanted New Yorker, getting ready to take my second road test in an attempt to get my first driver’s license.
When we moved, Amy immediately signed me up for classes. She was quite clear about not wanting to teach me, maintaining that she loved me and wanted to stay married.
So, one day, Mr. Williams – a retired high school driving instructor – showed up in his white Toyota Camry at my mother-in-law’s in Oregon City where we were living while getting settled.
It was clear from the start that there would be challenges.
I tried explaining to him that I was very excited to be getting my first driver’s license.
He didn’t seem to get it, adding “since moving to Oregon” to the end of my sentence.
“Nope,” I told him again. “Just my first driver’s license.” Then, in an attempt to drive the point home, I said, “ever.”
He just looked at me blankly.
The thing is, I wasn’t really excited. Well, a little excited. Mostly, terrified. I’ve never been great outside of my comfort zone. It’s always been a weird dichotomy in my life: as a reporter, I’m not saying I’m fearless but not a lot gets in my way of trying to do everything possible to get a story; in my personal life, it was – and still kind of is – the opposite.
Despite that, I was determined to step outside of the box and make it work. It was crucial on several levels. Amy was adjusting to a new job and I couldn’t burden her with me being trapped. Also, I had started freelancing for the Oregonian and while there was no guarantee that it would lead to a job, it was almost guaranteed that it wouldn’t happen if I couldn’t drive myself to an assignment.
So, I found myself in the driver’s seat of Mr. Williams’s Camry, determined to have a positive attitude while trying to also make sure that he understood that the last time that I’d been behind the wheel of a car, I was maybe eight and sitting on my grandfather’s lap as he let me steer on a quiet road.
Mr. Williams quickly made it clear that he did not understand.
He directed me toward the southbound on-ramp for 205, the highway that travels north and south through Oregon.
I asked him if he was sure, trying to remind him that this was my first time driving. Ever.
He told me not to worry.
Telling me not to worry is a lot like telling a kid not to push a button.
I did as I was told. It did not take long for Mr. Williams to finally understand what I had been trying to tell him.
“Mr. Miner! Slow down!”
I looked at the speedometer, which said that I was going 70. It may have been faster but since I don’t want to have look up the statute of limitations on driving infractions, we are sticking with 70.
“Sorry,” I told him and tried to explain that, having never been behind the wheel or put my foot on the gas, I had no idea what it felt like to go a certain speed.
He directed me to get off at the next exit.
We spent the rest of the lesson – and most of the next nine – pretty much sticking to quiet roads; very little driving on the highway, no parallel parking, which, weirdly, I turned out to be pretty good at.
After ten lessons, it was off to the Department of Motor Vehicles for my road test. I had a very bad feeling going in. The rain was coming down in such quantities that if I had stepped into one of the rivers forming in the streets, the Coast Guard would have had to come rescue me.
The rain shouldn’t have been an issue. You can’t live in Portland and not be able to drive in the rain. The joke is that Oregonians have as many words for rain as the Inuit have for snow.
But it was an issue. I failed miserably.
I crossed over the white lines more than once, unable to really make them out beneath the water; I missed a stop sign. It was a spectacular display of bad driving. The upside was that no one was hurt, no one died.
It was back to my mother-in-law’s home to regroup.
She lives in Oregon City, a mix of rural and suburban about 20 minutes outside of Portland. It has a population of roughly 35,000. That’s about the same size as Peter Cooper Village/Stuyvesant Town on Manhattan’s East Side, where I lived for years.
The scale of things took getting used to. When we first moved from our apartment on the Upper West Side, I used to joke that when I had walked for a mile from our apartment, I would pass Zabar’s, Citarella, Fairway,Barnes and Noble, used booksellers, numerous newsstands, Starbucks, clothing stores. Almost all he essentials were pretty much within walking distance.
Walking a mile from my mother-in-law’s front door, I would reach the end of the driveway.
While a bit of an exaggeration, failing my driving test only increased that feeling, that sense of isolation. Down the road from my mother-in-law’s, one home – in addition to horses, pigs, and sheep — had a miniature horse that liked to graze along the fence. I told Amy more than once that if I failed my driving test again, I would just get myself a miniature horse and ride to my assignments.
So, after two weeks of practice — mostly driving around my mother-in-law’s circular driveway but also brief excursions with my friend, Art, who was determined to make sure that I passed – I was back at the DMV watching the black woman in her 50s approaching.
Her race is only notable because Oregon is more than 90 percent white and manages to appear even whiter than that. When Oregon became a state, its legislature passed laws giving black people two years to move out of the state.
Forget about white Christmas, Oregon is white 365 days a year.
“Mr. Miner?” she said. “I’m Ms. Johnson and I’ll be administering your driving test. If you’ll just head out of the parking lot and make a right.”
I made sure that my belt was on, that her belt was on, that I looked left, right, backward, forward. I drove slowly. I kept an eye out for pedestrians, bicycles, skateboarders, scooters and, of course, other cars.
She would later tell me that I would need to practice going a little faster. “Above the speed limit is wrong,” she said. “Going too far below it is also wrong.”
I was careful to make sure that no stop sign was unheeded, no pedestrian was denied the right of way. I swerved a little between the lines but never crossed them.
Back at the DMV, the tension was crushing the dam that kept my tears at bay. She was very quiet for a moment before finally asking, “Mr. Miner, will this be your first time getting a driver’s license?”
That’s all it took.
Through tears, I told her about our journey from New York and my fear of not being able to work if I couldn’t drive. I told her how I was living out in Oregon City and I just really needed to be able to get to and from City Hall, the supermarket, and little more than that.
“Mr. Miner. I need to be honest with you. You’re not a great driver. I would say it’s right on the border if you should get a license.”
I became very quiet.
“I want you to promise me something. Just keep working on it. Stay off the highway unless you have someone with you to help you get better. Stay out of Portland until you really feel comfortable. Take nothing for granted. Just keep getting better.” She was looking right at me. “Promise?”
I nodded and quietly said, “absolutely.”
She made some notations and handed me a piece of paper.
“Congratulations,” she said.
***
Ten years later and my driving career was mixed at best. No serious crashes and certainly nothing with injuries but I did hit two bicyclists and one car in a parking lot.
The parking lot incident was kind of funny. I was maybe a week into my driving career and headed to meet the chief of police for a cup of coffee. I was looking for a space when a very large SUV started back out of spot, seemingly unaware that I was there. I panicked and backed up to get out of its way.
Unfortunately, the driver behind me didn’t see what was going on and didn’t move and I backed right into her truck.
Standing on the sidewalk outside of the coffee shop was the police chief who was clearly startled by the sudden crash right in front of him. I got out of the car, he saw that it was me, he saw that it was really just a minor tap and no one was hurt. He started to laugh.
To add to the drama, the driver who I bumped was the teenage daughter of an officer on the force. Her mom quickly arrived and the daughter admitted to having been looking at her phone and not paying attention.
The mom apologized to me and the chief. She walked away, threatening her daughter with jail. The chief and I had our coffee.
The two incidents with bicyclists were just stupid on my part. Neither was hurt but there was no excuse. The first time, the light turned red as I’d started crossing the intersection. I was left blocking the box so I backed up, not seeing the bicycle behind me.
The second one happened when I was making a right turn into the parking lot where I got dialysis. If it wasn’t for the fact that dialysis kept me alive, I’d say it was like a long prison term.
I didn’t see the bicycle coming along side me and he crashed into the side of my car. While he was unhurt, it was the first real indication of a larger problem.
I was losing my peripheral vision, my field of vision was shrinking.
It wasn’t new but it was getting worse. In the process of trying to figure out why, I saw about half a dozen eye doctors – all at the truly fabulous Casey Eye Center at Oregon Health Sciences University – and each time, I was passed along to another specialist. I ended up with an appointment with the genetics team to see if somehow it was a gene mutation.
The day of the appointment my cell phone rang with someone wanting to know if I would be showing up. I was about 20 minutes late.
I had to explain that while I was at OHSU at that moment, I was lying in a hospital bed waiting to be wheeled into the operating room so that I could get a new kidney.
They understood.
I eventually had the new appointment, actually a series of appointments, the most enjoyable of which was when they dilated my eyes, put me in a pitch black room, took away my cell phone so there would be zero chance of light coming in, and left me there for about 30 minutes.
I felt like they also told me that I need to think king and hard about what I’d done wrong but that’s probably not true.
After 30 minutes, the doctor came in with a red light headlamp and led me to a very dark room where there was only a red light. She then proceeded to tape my eyelids open and insert contacts that were too large in an effort to prevent me from blinking.
For the next 90 minutes, she flashed lights in both eyes to check my field of vision.
It was pleasant and, if you should ever be in this situation, I can pretty much assure you that they’ve heard all imaginable A Clockwork Orange references.
There were some more tests, photos taken and, the next day, I returned for some more tests.
After that, the doctors pretty much laid it out for me. They were fairly sure that I had what they called “laser creep.”
About 13 years before, I had had three laser procedures to stop bleeding in my eyes caused by diabetic retinopathy. As it turns out, it is not uncommon for the scarring to spread over time.
They said that it would likely continue to progress – never enough to blind me but enough to continue shrinking my field of vision – and there was nothing to do about it.
Here’s where things got more interesting.
The doctors said that to legally be able to drive, one needs a field of vision of 120 degrees.
They added that my combined field of vision was probably closer to 60 degrees. In other words, not even close.
I was told to come back in two weeks for what they call a “binocular” field of vision test where they look at both eyes in use at the same time.
They told that if the numbers were the same, I would lose my license.
And that’s what happened.
***
It hasn’t been that bad. I’ve developed good relationships with countless Uber drivers. Amy is the most supportive person on the planet, making sure that I get to where I need to be and puts up with my affinity for being chauffeured.
Lastly, I may not drive but I did a great job teaching our close friend”s dog to handle the wheel. Harper’s driving in the photo above. You can see Pepper, our dog and Harper’s “sister” in the back being chauffeured. Like her dad.