Working Title: License to Flaunt

Possible Alternates: "I'm on a roll", "Wheely happy", "I'm a happy jalopy", "Driving my own Destiny" or my favorite "Finally oh fricking finally I got the same dang piece of paper (soon to be plastic card) that every other kid and their sister and 4th cousin twice removed got when they were 16 and I some how managed not to until I'm 31 but it's all cool now cause they can go suck it and the cars they rode in on!"
Today I drive free.
Today I can go down to the car and slip the key into the ignition and roll smoothly down the driveway with nothing but my own off key humming to accompany me.
Not that I want to, it's just knowing that I CAN. The devil inside, who so often voices it's own opinion, prompts me to admit I suppose I could have done that any time but let me add that now I can LEGALLY. You know, it's a lot like illegally only less nerve wracking and less bail.
Today I got my license and didn't slobber grateful kisses all over the testing lady.
Today I swallowed fear like it was made of cookie dough, jamming it down into the very pit of my stomach where I chained it, lashed it, tied it up with guts and a sprinkling of positive attitude that was 10 months in the making.
Little motes of good thoughts and pink globs of husbandly love fluttered about my head as my cheeks flamed, my lips dried and my eyelashes tried to once again assault my own eyeballs, all part of a scheme to undermine my confidence. But I willed the panic away, I ignored the sweat, I smiled at the other DMV-ers and not a single snarl escaped my lips when we literally waited an eternity for my turn with the tester.
AN ETERNITY, to most it appeared just an hour, but my husband and I know different, it was an eternity. And it was a test beyond the test.
The focus of the day was the behind the wheel test of course but the Universe was also there, testing my will, my spirit and my resolve. I am pretty sure that as the DMV-er's kids shrieked like demented monkeys, running about the front of the building as their parents idly watched, that the universe was also watching me. Perhaps in it's eyes I was the demented monkey screeching kid who should know better than to disobey it's parents. It kept a keen eye on me to see what I was gonna do, was I going to crack and run away screaming...or stay and take the dreaded test?
I saw it, to every one else it was but a single shiny black crow perched on the edge of the DMV building, but our gazes locked and I knew it was actually the Universe. I may not get an officially stamped piece of paper at the end of IT'S test but I would get to wave the finger of my choice in fear's face.
The universe made that eternity, that endless stretch of time happen. Poking and prodding at my fear, seeing if it would grow and blossom into the dark bloom of terror that it has in the past. But it didn't. I met the Universe's test head on and acknowledged what it was doing. The crow cawwwed, a universal laugh of amusement. Muscles will grow weak and floppy like wet noodles if unused, the universe was providing me an extra opportunity for muscle building. Thanks...I think.
Nerves may have stretched but I'll be damned if they snapped.
I don't mind admitting the nerves. In fact to deny them would remove all the awesomeness of my feat from today. My nerves were giant red pulsing things that snarled like monsters and chewed away at my resolve. I smacked said nerves in their beasty faces with a little standard transmission know-how and old fashioned logic. I COULD DO THIS. Nerves can not deny logic.
Once upon a time moving the car mere feet in the drive way caused me great agonies the likes of which the Victorian ladies of by-gone swooning days could have related to.
Once upon a time the idea of stopping the car on a hill and starting again with out rolling backwards for ever and eventually crashing into something made my hands shake and heart stutter.
Once upon a time I navigated through traffic with arms so stiff they ached when we came home and I named my own sore ankles "clutch foot".
But 10 months passes and as my husband said many a time in a constant cheerful tone, an un-wavering will of support, "We're eating an elephant sweetie. One bite at a time, that's all you can do."
So I bit off moving the car and I swallowed it and damned if it didn't taste like the best fudge brownie you never had.
I hauled at the stopping and starting the car on a hill with my teeth, ripping it to shreds until my stomach was full and the drive around town no longer seemed like a series of straight stretches punctuated by hills of fear and incessant praying that the light didn't go red before I got to it so I wouldn't have to stop and start again right there because Lord help me some buffoon actually thinks they get to drive on this road too and actually has the audacity to be right behind me and what's he gonna say when he gets a face full of my fender?
Driving through traffic became less of a physical exercise and I joyfully gulped down long stretches of street, highway and freeway. I sucked them down like vanilla milkshakes and one day, I found myself chatting about all the miscellanea of life to my husband as we navigated through rush hour traffic, chatting idly about the President, food dyes and peroxide powered jet packs. And I marveled at how that could be?
HOW could that be? How can one go from driveway near hysteria to downshifting through the busy intersection on a Friday evening. Because I was eating the elephant. And it tasted gooooooooooooooood.
But the real test, the behind the wheel of the car with a complete stranger who isn't my husband, test was yet to come. And after years of agonizing, worrying and building up the moment to such a momentous mountain to climb...it was over.
OVER!
15 years, 1 week and 13 minutes later and the tester lady was saying that I could practice stopping just a little more smoothly and I was biting my tongue, and swallowing hard to keep down my elephant and finally blurted "Did I pass?"
And she said...."Yes."
Did I hear angels singing and a chorus of otherworldly creatures cheering me on? Or was that just the pinging and twanging of my facial muscles smiling so hard that they popped and sprung free like over tightened guitar strings? (I am sure I will now need a face cast.)
My husband saw me coming, and he knew I passed. Smiles can spread good news faster than a single syllable word.
So we celebrated.
By driving some more of course, for the hell of it instead of practice. We bought arty/crafty magazines and headphones for the ipod. We dined at El Torito because it turns out elephant isn't as filling as you might think.
And every second thing I have said today has been "I GOT MY LICENSE!"
I called my Mom and bragged.
"I GOT MY LICENSE!"
I updated my facebook status message.
"I GOT MY LICENSE!"
I bebopped around the kitchen like I was the first person ever to figure out how to drive a car and be legally licensed to do so. Then I had leftover birthday cheesecake.
By the way, I got my license today.