The cake said "16" in blue frosting and Lainey had stuck a toy car on top of it, a little plastic sedan she found in a drawer. It was the wrong color for the Civic and she didn't care. That was Thursday, January 22. This Thursday, the 29th, he takes the driving test.
He's been on his permit since March 8, so a little over ten months. Missouri wants at least six months on the permit, 40 hours of supervised driving with 10 at night, and then a driving test at a Highway Patrol exam station. If he passes, he gets an intermediate license. We're ready, or about as ready as a parent gets.
Where the log ended up
The green notebook in the van's glovebox closed out at 40 hours back in the fall, with the night hours done in July. We kept driving after that and kept logging it, mostly out of habit. The count is past 50 now. Since December a lot of those hours have been in his own car, the 2012 Civic we bought from a retired couple in Savannah, which is a different animal from the van. Smaller, lighter, a lot easier to see out of, and it gets about 32 miles per gallon instead of 19, which I've pointed out more than once.
He'll test in the Civic. It's the car he'll drive, and it's the one he parks best.
Thirty parallel parks
The test includes parallel parking. Garrett will tell you he's good at it. He's mostly right, which is the problem. A kid who is 90 percent sure he's good at something is the kid who gets lazy on the one that counts.
So over three weekends in January we went to the church lot on Sunday afternoon with two plastic trash cans and a tape measure. Cans set about 22 feet apart, which gives the Civic room but not a lot. He parked between them 30 times. I counted. Some of those were in the ice and slush leftover after the cold snap, which was its own kind of practice.
What we worked on:
- Pull up even with the front "car," about two or three feet out.
- Back slowly, turn the wheel when his rear wheel lines up with the back of the front can.
- Straighten out when the front can is about at his passenger door, then finish into the space.
- Stop, check the gap front and back, adjust once if he needs to. Once. Not four times.
- Signal and check the mirror before pulling out. That's the step he skipped most.
By the last ten he was getting it in on the first try nearly every time. One went up on the imaginary curb. We call that one "the Silverado."
The parallel park gets all the attention, but it's maybe a minute of the test. The rest is ordinary driving with an examiner in the passenger seat: stops, turns, signals, speed, checking mirrors, lane position. So we did a few weekday runs after school around the north end of town, with me being the quiet examiner. No coaching, just a clipboard, which Garrett said was "honestly creepy." At the end I'd read him my notes. Rolling right turn on red, twice. Signaling late going into a turn lane. Not enough look over the shoulder before pulling away from the curb.
The car has to pass too
The exam station checks that the car you bring is legal and working, so last weekend we went over the Civic in the garage the same way I'd check anything before a long drive:
Headlights, high beams, brake lights, turn signals front and back, horn, both mirrors adjusted, the wipers we put on in December, washer fluid full. Insurance card and registration in the glovebox, current. I swapped one dim license plate bulb that had gone yellow. That was the whole repair bill: two dollars and a few minutes on my back on the cold floor.
The weather is the wild card. We had the cold snap on the 17th and 18th, minus six in the morning, which killed the van's battery. The forecast this week has been talking about ice. If the roads are bad Thursday, we'll reschedule. Nobody needs their test to also be their first ice storm.
I keep thinking about the first night on his permit, when he asked if he could drive home from the license office. I said no. This time, if it goes well, I'll be the one in the passenger seat on the way home, and he'll be driving because he's allowed to. I'll report back.