Erins Drivers License

I'll just leave the story about me getting my drivers license.

So the system is like this, take a drivers ed course, get tested to make sure you are not blind, can read signs, answer questions, take a written test, wait a year to get a drivers test, then for the first time you have a license graduated restrictions are put on you for a year. Not quite like it was when I got my license, how times change.

When I was 18 I woke up one morning and as it was raining, couldn't get any farm work done, so out of the blue I called the Government in Wilkie and said I wanted to get my drivers license, Ok they said come on in, so i trekked off to Wilkie located the office and got parking spot right in front of the door. I went in told them what I wanted and someone set me down at a desk gave me a paper with a bunch of driving questions on it and said "answer these and then give me the paper back". Seemed simple enough, I finished, turned it in she checked off the answers and said "good, that will be three dollars". I produced the money and she did her thing and gave me a slip of paper with my name on it.

Great I thought until I looked at it and it said - beginners permit, "wait a minute" I said "I wanted my drivers license". "Oh" she said, "well now that you have your beginners permit you can learn to drive" but I replied "I already know how to drive, I've been driving for a long time. I came in for the driving test. "How did you get here" she asked "I drove" I said, "but you can't drive without a license" she responded, "I know" I said, "tha'ts why I came in, to get one. "Well how are you getting home" she asked, "drive" I said, "but you can't drive unless someone who has a license is with you" "really" I said "I came in by myself, my parents were busy". We had hit an impasse.

She went and talked with a guy who came out to see me, "I want to take my driving test now " I told him, "OK lets go" he said. We settled into the car, I started it up and began to back out of the angle parking spot. "That's enough " he said " pull back in". I guess he must have been in a hurry because we never went for the test drive. I have to admit I was kind of disappointed because before I had left to come into town I had had set up a barrel about 30 feet behind the tractor and practiced parallel parking, I wouldn't have minded showing off.

Anyway the girl asked me for another 3 dollars for my license and I tried arguing I had already paid once and didn't want the beginners permit anyway, I felt it was very unfair because I had only had it for 10 minutes, but she wouldn't budge. That was my first introduction to bureaucratic rules, but at least I got my license.

I wonder how my neighbour Susan Mann would make out today if she went in and told them she had been driving a 3 ton truck with 15,000 pounds of grain in the back for her father since she was 11 by sitting on a box placed on the seat. She had to sit on the box to be high enough to see out the windshield but had to slide off it to get close enough to the floor to reach the clutch to shift gears and she used a stick to control the gas. I'm guessing Roger would have had a warrant issued for his arrest, Social Services would have been notified to remove her from the home and a counsellor would have been contacted to get her into therapy for the trauma she suffered.

How times have changed.