Before I left England lo those many years ago, I took a half-dozen driving lessons. In a manual shift car. On the “other” side of the road. Not too much later I emigrated to the U.S.A. For the first three years in the States I lived in Venice Beach, California as a little British Beach Bunny. I was within three blocks of the beach and a mere bus ride away from my job with Nakamichi in Santa Monica. It was a relatively carefree period of my life all told. Within a couple of years, however, my employer decided to relocate to Torrance — which was both inland and a long way from Venice Beach. I did not want to relocate in that direction, so instead I moved to the San Fernando Valley. Which meant that I had to buy a car . . . even though, technically-speaking I could not drive. By “technically-speaking” I mean “my knowledge of driving consisted of how to open the passenger door and get in”.

Somehow I managed to scrape up the money to pay for three driving lessons. In an automatic shift. On the wrong side of the road. Surprisingly, I did quite well and my instructor very graciously accompanied me to the Department of Motor Vehicles ["DMV"] in order to apply for a driver’s license. He gave me very specific instructions beforehand about which form to complete and where to stand in the examining area. When I walked in, I immediately noticed a pair of little old ladies standing together in the exam room, in full view of the entire office, with a California Driver’s Manual propped open in front of them. Said manual containing the answers to all of the questions on the written portion of the driver’s test. As instructed, I picked up my form, took it into the exam area, and stood by the fire exit. A moment later I heard a “pssstt” from behind me and turned to find my instructor standing in the now-open fire exit door. He gestured at me to join him and feeling thoroughly bewildered, I did so and he grabbed my arm and yanked me out the door! He goose-stepped me over to his car, flung me into the passenger side and took off like we had just robbed a bank. He stopped a couple of streets away, took my test form away from me, and started filling out the answers while mumbling something about having to make a couple of deliberate mistakes so it would look convincing. He also told me that one of the road test examiners was a huge Anglophile and that he had pulled a string or two to ensure that Mr. Anglophile would be my instructor. “Just talk a lot”, he told me “and try not to crash”. Meantime, I just sat there and worked on closing my jaw. He drove us back a few minutes later and let me back in through the same fire exit door!!! Sure enough, my test examiner was all atwitter the minute I opened my mouth and started to babble inanely about the weather. I kept up my little monologue throughout the road test at the end of which my wonderful examiner congratulated me for scoring a 77 which meant I had passed because the test required a passing score of 75. [Yet, to this day I am still a better driver than 90% of the twunts I encounter on the road.]

Several years later, I had accidentally acquired three parking tickets which I failed to pay on the basis of having no idea that unpaid ticket fines eventually TREBLED . . . after which an arrest warrant would be issued. One night I was out with my friend Robin and I felt a bit tipsy so I asked her if she could drive. She felt fine to do so and thus we went on our merry way. Except there was also the small matter of my registration being expired. Whoopsie. Sure enough we saw a cop car and worse, they saw us. Robin attempted a nifty evasive maneuvre consisting of making a rapid left turn. The cops, unfortunately, were on to us. We got pulled over a moment later and after Robin admitted that she was driving my car, the cop’s partner asked for MY license. As it turned out, we both had arrest warrants for unpaid parking tickets. The cops pretended to put on a show in order to scare the daylights out of us — which worked, I might add — but let us go on condition we swore to take care of the tickets the next day. I didn’t actually have the money to pay for my tickets so I did the next best thing ….. I sent to England for my sister’s birth certificate. I then went to a DMV far from where I lived and applied for a new license using my sister’s middle and maiden names. Not that I expected my sister would ever move to California and apply for a driver’s license, but in the incredibly unlikely event that she did, her name would not match the one that I used. I drove around happily under my alias for several years, up until I got married and legally changed my real surname and was able to get a brand-new driver’s license.

So there you have it — the beginning of my life as a Criminal Mistressmind . . .

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 28th, 2008 at 1:28 pm and is filed under Humour. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.