It's been 10 years since I last had a driving permit. Soon after getting it, I crashed my ex's car and ah...the lessons stopped.

Well, my ID expired, and I was going to have to go to the DMV in person anyway, so... and I was getting nagged to "go legal" once again with the driving lessons... so, yeah.

Things that have changed since 10 years ago:
(a) They charged me $28 to take the exam. Um, what? Just to take it? That's ridiculous. I thought, "How many times am I going to have to pay $28 to flunk this?" If they were giving me some kind of temporary laminated permit, I could understand this, but for the not-even-a-Scantron test? Gouging!
(b) They take your picture to get a permit, BEFORE you take the test. This seems bizarrely positive of them. Really, shouldn't they wait to find out if you need such a thing? (The good news is, they give you the printout of the pic and I am now hopeful that my new ID picture will look a lot less shitty than the previous one, which I call "Pumpkinhead" for the sheer orangeness of the photograph. I made sure to not dye my hair a funny color before going in, and also wore blue.)

Now, going in before this I was kind of all, "If you flunk, you flunk, won't be the first time, you have studied, you mostly get most of the questions now, try not to freak out."

Well. All those practice exams on the Internet? The stuff I printed out from the handbook? BWAHAHAHAHAH, maybe 20% of that was on the actual exam. I had to flat-out guess at most of the questions because I hadn't see a darned one of them before. Now, it's entirely possible that they drastically changed things in the handbook from the last time I studied it in the fall (while making up the flash cards), but I seriously did not know most of the test. Or why suddenly the state of California is really concerned with my knowing if it's legal to smoke around my children in a car (wait, what?) rather than all the questions I memorized about tank trucks and what's 6000 pounds and has 3 axels or whatever. I did a lot of guessing. And accepting that I'd just wasted $28 on a test that for all intents and purposes now I hadn't studied for worth a damn. And kicking myself.

I very barely restrained myself from saying, "I know I flunked" when I walked up to the grader. "You missed five questions," she said. And as I was starting the "I know, I know, I suck" parade, she said, "You passed."

"Wait, WHAT?!?!"

Apparently the DMV has long since forgotten that this is not my first go-round taking the test, and thus I was allowed to miss more than 3 questions (6 is allowed on the first time). WHEW.

I am still shellshocked like you wouldn't believe right now.

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