The State of Pennsylvania Makes My Poor Decisions For Me

As a disclaimer to all of our legions of dedicated readers, this entry is not going to be about a poor decision of either Danielle's or mine.

This is not to say that this entry will not deal with a poor decision, it will, but the fault here really is not either of ours. The fault in this particular instance lies on the head of the Pennsylvania Department of Motor Vehicles, a subsidiary of the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation.

That's right, ladies and gentlemen (lady? gentleman? anyone?) I simply cannot accept the blame for having received my driver's license, as it is really not my fault. PennDOT should simply have taken one look at me, a fresh-faced seventeen year old, striding pridefully into the DMV to take my learner's permit test, and shown me the proverbial door.

Alas, for hedges, turkeys, and gearboxes everywhere, PennDOT allowed two thoroughly unqualified persons to lay their hands on those unholy little plastic cards.

Between the two of us, we have been driving for a combined eight years. I've had my license for almost a year (June 4th, soon to be designated Dead Car Day, a national holiday) and Danielle's been driving on her own for seven.

Now, while Danielle has never had an accident per say, I would consider her the more... lethal driver. While she didn't actually kill that turkey she hit, she probably shortened its life considerably. The poor thing must have developed turkey PTSD, and spent a week or more huddled in it's little turkey home, shuddering and losing feathers by the pillowfull, gobbling to itself in horror. Also I've never run a red light. Danielle has run two. Two. In one night. What a rebel.

I myself have a near-perfect driving record. Since getting behind the wheel of a car, as a learner's permit wielding seventeen year old (I was a late bloomer, sue me) I have only come close to killing a bush, not an animate creature, and have only had two little accidents. And only one of them was as a licensed driver! I feel strongly that my permit-holding record should really be expunged and never mentioned again. And that second accident really wasn't that big a deal. I mean, it only cost $5,000 to repair the car, nothing, really.

As to our general record as drives, I feel that Danielle has made by far worse attempts at parking than I have. In fact, seven times out of ten, I simply refuse to park whatever it is I'm driving and make my passenger do it for me. Which inherently makes me a more successful parker than Danielle. And I consider my ineptitude at going forward when on hills, a mark of creative gear shifting, an art form really. I am choosing to engage in an act of surrealist driving, in selecting what would be called by the unwashed masses the “wrong” gear. No, dear friends, my gear choices are a mark of my belonging to the true avant garde. The forward thinkers, if not the forward drivers.

In short, I refuse to take any blame at any time for any accidents or mishaps or adventures or flagrant if unintentional law breaking perpetrated by either of the authors of this blog.

It's clearly PennDOT's fault.