Hold Some Of My Calls

I’m under the gun. I’ve put away my bathroom book, my bedside book and four magazines. It’s Sunday and only 72 more hours to memorize the Motor Vehicle Manual. Wednesday 11:30 is judgment hour. I won’t peek at the newspaper or check my email. I even refuse to read my cereal box. .

I’m stuffing my cranial space with such essentials as the distance it takes a big rig to jack-knife on the 405 under black ice conditions. Or a six axle truck to brake traveling in the fog on a snowy four-lane divided highway with an iPod stuck in the driver’s ear. Or how to make a U-turn with a U-Haul from a one-way street when your horn gets stuck in a hospital zone.

The numbers are free floating in my brain; was it 30 seconds and four hundred feet to report the sale of a car or…..? How does anyone pass this test?
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Monday afternoon and I'm beginning to panic. I'm traveling back 57 years to a big exam in college when cheating was almost expected.

150 in the class and all but a handful of us in fraternities. We formed our own quasi-frat. The tests were numbered and the Greek clubs had the answers. After the exam a fellow came up to me and said, "You are Wolitsky, aren't you?" When I told him NO, I'm Levine, he said, Damn it, I just copied the whole test off you." I told him not to worry, I copied from Wolitsky.

But I digress! I have no expectation of running into Wolitsky at the DMV. So now I am purging my head of all extraneous matter to make room for this new data. There goes my old phone numbers, words to a few Gilbert & Sullivan standards and everyone in my elementary school class, I'm tossing away some Latin names from the pharmacopeia of 1950, long since fallen into disrepute. And there goes the roster for the pennant winning St. Louis Browns of 1944.

Tuesday evening with uncluttered head I'm checking old driving tests found on the internet. Aside from a couple of puzzlers the questions are all common sense. There's hope for me yet. Maybe I won’t stop at every corner and get out to look for trains. All I have to worry about now is the eye test.