And do you feel scared,
I do
But I won't stop and falter
And if we threw it all away
Things can only get better
--Howard Jones, "Things Can Only Get Better," 1985.
My youngest daughter recently got her driver's license. Since this is the third child to get a license, besides the parents' experiences at the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), you'd think I would be an expert by now on how to navigate the DMV. But the place of which I once said, “All of the ineptitude of the entire world converges at the DMV” is always a challenge, and my trips there are just far enough apart in time that I can never exactly remember what is supposed to happen or what the process is.
The first decision is always to figure out which parent will take time off of work to go to the DMV with the child. Since a school principal trumps every other job in the world, I am always the one selected to go to the DMV, even though I am the so-called head of the house. I was also selected when my wife was a teacher. So for the third time, I will do my duty. But my job was supposed to be relatively easy this time: meet my daughter at the DMV, get in the long line so that after she passes the driving test, she can join me at the spot in line and be processed for her license. This was the plan anyway.
The driving instructor picked up my daughter at 6:30 am to go and practice before the test. There was also another student with her doing the same thing. After they had both practiced parallel parking and were confirming their paperwork the driving instructor realized that my daughter's date for the driving test was actually not Monday, but Wednesday. Since this is our third child, we do not micromanage her scheduling, or tell her to do much of anything. This is one of the few times that strategy didn’t really work. So my daughter worked out a plan with the driving instructor where he would bring her back to our town and I would meet them near the high school, take her to school, and then I would go on to work since I had not actually left home to go to the DMV when the discovery was made.
At about 8:00 am, the driving instructor dropped off my daughter on a side street near the high school. Unbeknownst to both of us, as she was getting into the car, she dropped her driving permit with the DMV driving test paperwork in the grass by the curb. As I started driving her to school, she started looking for her paperwork and realized it was missing. At this point, the ride to school got tense with her frantically trying to figure out where the permit is and me discussing the benefits of using a Google calendar to manage appointments rather than paper calendars so that this kind of thing doesn’t happen again. She didn’t appreciate my wisdom at the time but I’m sure she will later on.
We finally arrived at school and then, since the only logical thing that we could think of is that she dropped the paperwork getting into the car, I decided to drive back to the drop-off point to check and see if I might be able to find the driving permit on the ground. I have to admit that on the drive in extremely heavy traffic, I am envisioning her driving permit blowing through the neighborhood, the problems we will have applying to get a new permit, and finally someone finding it and stealing her identity, and then my identity. (I know, but it didn’t seem crazy in the car!) For some reason, the song by Howard Jones from the big-haired 1980s--“Things Can Only Get Better”--came to mind, even though I don’t think I had heard it for at least 30 years--so I pulled it up on Spotify and listened to it three times on the way. And I heard something in the song I had never noticed before:
And do you feel scared,
I do
But I won't stop and falter
And if we threw it all away
Things can only get better
Jones sings that . . . I do part in a falsetto, and so I started singing along in the falsetto too. (Actually, I started screaming that falsetto part in the car!) And it made me feel better, just to acknowledge that I was scared that I wasn’t going to find the permit and I was scared that the whole thing might unleash a chain of events that might hurt my daughter, and eventually me. But the song reminded me that in spite of all that, things can only get better. And they did.
I made it back into town and drove to the exact spot where she got into my car, and right there in the grass was the permit. There was no wind on this beautiful day, and the permit stayed put right in the grass. I then called the principal (my wife) to let her know I had found the permit. The principal let the daughter, who has been maintaining a vigil in the principal’s office for most of the past hour, know that Dad found the permit. Order had been restored to the universe. Things could only get better, and they did.
Two days later, we tried again, and everything went perfect the second time and my daughter is now a licensed driver. I am still listening to “Things Can Only Get Better” and screaming that part in a falsetto that says, “And do you feel scared, I do!” And I have to say, it always makes me feel better. So much so, in fact, that I'm starting to think about going back to the DMV to turn in the 10 or so sets of license plates I have collected in my basement over the years.
The first decision is always to figure out which parent will take time off of work to go to the DMV with the child. Since a school principal trumps every other job in the world, I am always the one selected to go to the DMV, even though I am the so-called head of the house. I was also selected when my wife was a teacher. So for the third time, I will do my duty. But my job was supposed to be relatively easy this time: meet my daughter at the DMV, get in the long line so that after she passes the driving test, she can join me at the spot in line and be processed for her license. This was the plan anyway.
The driving instructor picked up my daughter at 6:30 am to go and practice before the test. There was also another student with her doing the same thing. After they had both practiced parallel parking and were confirming their paperwork the driving instructor realized that my daughter's date for the driving test was actually not Monday, but Wednesday. Since this is our third child, we do not micromanage her scheduling, or tell her to do much of anything. This is one of the few times that strategy didn’t really work. So my daughter worked out a plan with the driving instructor where he would bring her back to our town and I would meet them near the high school, take her to school, and then I would go on to work since I had not actually left home to go to the DMV when the discovery was made.
At about 8:00 am, the driving instructor dropped off my daughter on a side street near the high school. Unbeknownst to both of us, as she was getting into the car, she dropped her driving permit with the DMV driving test paperwork in the grass by the curb. As I started driving her to school, she started looking for her paperwork and realized it was missing. At this point, the ride to school got tense with her frantically trying to figure out where the permit is and me discussing the benefits of using a Google calendar to manage appointments rather than paper calendars so that this kind of thing doesn’t happen again. She didn’t appreciate my wisdom at the time but I’m sure she will later on.
We finally arrived at school and then, since the only logical thing that we could think of is that she dropped the paperwork getting into the car, I decided to drive back to the drop-off point to check and see if I might be able to find the driving permit on the ground. I have to admit that on the drive in extremely heavy traffic, I am envisioning her driving permit blowing through the neighborhood, the problems we will have applying to get a new permit, and finally someone finding it and stealing her identity, and then my identity. (I know, but it didn’t seem crazy in the car!) For some reason, the song by Howard Jones from the big-haired 1980s--“Things Can Only Get Better”--came to mind, even though I don’t think I had heard it for at least 30 years--so I pulled it up on Spotify and listened to it three times on the way. And I heard something in the song I had never noticed before:
And do you feel scared,
I do
But I won't stop and falter
And if we threw it all away
Things can only get better
Jones sings that . . . I do part in a falsetto, and so I started singing along in the falsetto too. (Actually, I started screaming that falsetto part in the car!) And it made me feel better, just to acknowledge that I was scared that I wasn’t going to find the permit and I was scared that the whole thing might unleash a chain of events that might hurt my daughter, and eventually me. But the song reminded me that in spite of all that, things can only get better. And they did.
I made it back into town and drove to the exact spot where she got into my car, and right there in the grass was the permit. There was no wind on this beautiful day, and the permit stayed put right in the grass. I then called the principal (my wife) to let her know I had found the permit. The principal let the daughter, who has been maintaining a vigil in the principal’s office for most of the past hour, know that Dad found the permit. Order had been restored to the universe. Things could only get better, and they did.
Two days later, we tried again, and everything went perfect the second time and my daughter is now a licensed driver. I am still listening to “Things Can Only Get Better” and screaming that part in a falsetto that says, “And do you feel scared, I do!” And I have to say, it always makes me feel better. So much so, in fact, that I'm starting to think about going back to the DMV to turn in the 10 or so sets of license plates I have collected in my basement over the years.
*I took my oldest daughter to get her license eight years earlier. You can read about that here.