Rolling up to the DMV cabin on the far side of Mansfield, I’m already aware that there’s a nasty old crone working here, known far and wide as a real ball buster. She has an impeccable reputation for failing pretty much everyone, for any reason at all. To cite but one example, Andy Carpenter bombed out something like four times in a row, and he had her most if not all of those occasions, is but one of many who have given me a horror story involving this miserable old lady. Naturally, though multiple windows are open today, she is the testing overlord I wind up being saddled with.
As expected, I fail the visual exam. But in my insurmountable cleverness, I have already come up with a convenient excuse, I believe, which will buy me some time, get me through this ordeal. Of course Dad never really paid much attention to Daniel and me, so he wouldn’t even remember that I ever wore glasses unless reminded. Yet when I inevitably failed this portion of the test, I intended to “remember” that I don’t have my glasses on me, and claim that they are in my locker at school — which is of course locked up tightly, because it is spring break.
What I don’t expect to happen next is for us to turn around and drive back to Lexington, to my high school, because Dad’s determined he can get into the building anyway. Mike continues playing the same mixtape over and over again, is obsessed today in particular with Dobie Gray’s Drift Away and Bonnie Tyler’s Total Eclipse Of The Heart, the only two cuts I recall for certain.
“I just love that part,” he says one time, near the tail end of the latter, where the music stops and the song’s fading away as some dude pleads for “bright eyes” to turn around, possibly meaning Bonnie herself, in an exceptionally high pitched voice. Mike then mimics this line out loud and turns to Dad, asking him, “you know?”
“Yeah,” Dad grumbles.
Given all this and his doppelganger status for Michael Stipe, uh, ahem, it’s only fair to wonder about our buddy Mike and his own potential gayness. However, although this came up quite a bit over the years, even back then, the verdict was always apparently no on that front. In fact, he was more often than not showing up with a steady stream of nice looking girls. They tended to not stick around too long, true, but you nonetheless got the sense he was dating them. We just eventually concluded he was one of these types who dressed well, was handsome enough, harmless in temperament and probably the most hilarious person we knew, to the extent that females found him irresistible. At first, anyhow.
Well, so anyway, we eventually arrive at my deserted high school. Dad hops out of the car, hellbent upon checking every single door to the building, as the rest of us dutifully trail behind him. I am praying that he does not succeed, and with every failure encountered, these somewhat distant dreams raise my dour spirits just a little bit higher. I allow myself to believe I will emerge from this entire ordeal unscathed.
Except then we stumble onto one near which the distinct whir of a vacuum cleaner can be heard. Dad pounds on this door until our head janitor, Phil, eventually materializes on the other side. He opens the door and sticks his head out to see what this commotion is all about. After Dad relates our sorry tale, Phil graciously allows us to enter, then accompanies us in our journey across the building. Therefore this surreal scene of Dad, Daniel, Mike Mills and me strolling through a deserted and mostly darkened high school, alongside janitor Phil, halfway across the building to my locker.
Amid this sea of identical, slender, bright yellow lockers, mine is located this year slightly beyond the center of the school, in the primary English hallway. The blonde, lithe, somewhat sarcastic and in her case often exquisitely bespectacled Miss Noggle, widely perceived as the most beautiful teacher in this school (and a fellow Galion-ite, to boot!) will be my English instructor in 9th and 12th grade both, a fortuitous double helping if ever there is one. This year, however, one of those in between the two, I don’t have a class with her, yet my locker is luckily right outside her door anyway, by whatever magical roll of the dice generates these results.
As our temporarily increased mob of now five arrive at this destination, I dial up the combination to open the creaky metal door. Then make a tremendous show of what I already know is a total waste of time. The others stand mostly mute but at least partially amused (as in, some of the people are somewhat amused) as I paw around in what I’m well aware is a vain search through piles of accumulated junk. Eventually I have no choice but to admit I have no idea as to the whereabouts of these glasses.
Dad is not pleased by this ordeal in the least bit, and berates me continually, though he has no real choice but to steer us over to the nearest express eyeglasses place — one hour or less! — located on the high, hilly corner of Trimble and Park Avenue, right beside Metronome Music. The four of us twiddle our thumbs until these new, only slightly less dorky spectacles (which I also mostly refuse to wear, in case you’re wondering) are finally ready.
At last, we return to the cabin, where I’m able to secure my well earned learner’s permit. Dad is of course twice as pissed off as he would have been if I’d explained my dilemma at the beginning of this odyssey. If there’s one silver lining to all this, however, he does experience enough verbal sparring with the notorious old crone himself that when it’s time for me to get my driver’s license for real, we steer clear of this place. Future trips will find us driving to the one in Mt. Vernon instead.
Recommended Book of the Week:
Winning Goal by Laura Marquez Diamond
A Holiday Novella
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SABRINA
Dexter Whitby is the captain of the Mavericks, my best friend, and my husband.
We made a deal to get married so I can receive the medical treatment I need to recover from a car accident. It’s the favor of a lifetime.
Unfortunately, no one told me about the most important rule for surviving a marriage of convenience.
Do not, under any circumstances, kiss your husband.
DEXTER
Sabrina Ramirez is a phenomenal goalie, my best friend, and my wife.
Living with this extraordinary woman is a gift to me, not a favor to her. But I can’t let myself forget that this is a platonic arrangement.
Trying not to think about her that way is starting to feel like torture.
I wish someone warned me that a marriage of convenience is damn inconvenient when your wife is the woman of your dreams.
