The notice comes well before your 80th birthday; the dreaded senior’s driving test.
To give the government credit, they want you to pass, they don’t actually test your driving ability; the test is on the internet, how could you fail?
But it gets you thinking.
The first thing you think about is the fact that, chances are, you’re driving to your test. What’s with that? And the second thing is, if you’re not driving to your test, why are you even considering a test? You are not driving.
And I guess I should mention that if you plan to drive in Toronto, you really don’t need a test; you’re 80, you need your head examined. Have someone push your wheelchair to the bay window and let you start contemplating nothing.
So you muse about the irony of driving to a driving test and hope that you make it without an accident before you get there. Then you pause, ‘If I fail, how do I get home?’
As I drove into the parking lot, I had this feeling that someone, a highly skilled professional who’s in on this exercise, was watching me from a one-way window in the classroom so I back in. Not paranoid at all but why not cover all the bases?
‘We saw you backing your car into the parking spot, well done, never seen anyone do that before, why don’t we just give you a pass right now and send you on your way? And, by the way, you look so young what with all that hair.’
The designated torture room is on the second floor; I take the stairs (Hey, it’s only one floor and a highly skilled professional could be watching.)
‘We saw you climb the stairs, avoiding the long line-up at the elevator, never seen anyone do that before, well done, why don’t we just give you a pass right now and send you on your way? And, by the way, you look so young what with all that hair.’
From outside the door of the designated room you can see that all the waiting room seats are taken, that’s good, you will stand and again impress those watching you from the one-way window. (By now you know the rationale.)
The first question you ask yourself, ‘I wonder how I look compared to the others?’ I mean, we’re all officially 80, you can’t get around it, but you’re curious. Well, they all look a little nervous, as if in denial; they sit up straight, hide their canes and try to focus without dabbing their watering eyes.
Eventually a young woman ushers everyone into the classroom. I’d have thought that they’d have an 80+ year old handle the proceedings. You know, make us feel that we’re among our own kind and show that you’re still capable of doing something worthwhile at 80 even if it doesn’t involve driving.
Now that you’re together just about everybody looks old so you feel a little better since you have some hair and you’re not using a walker. A word about 80 year olds with walkers. How can you drive if you can’t walk? Maybe that’s it; you’ve giving up on walking so you might as well get a licence to drive.
But I’m being insensitive; I’m sure you can drive even if you need help walking but I’d like to know about it. Maybe the car licence should say, instead of ‘Yours to discover,’ ‘Yours to watch out for,’ so I can stay clear of him. And everybody didn’t get to the test on their own. There’s the (I’m guessing) 56 year old daughter enquiring how long the test will be so she can come back and bundle her 80 year old dad into the car.
We get seated. The course is limited to about a dozen people which, to my mathematical mind, means that they must be doing these courses 4 times a day, 5 days a week forever.
So, how does it work? As I said, it’s all laid out on the internet. The government’s not that slow, they know this segment is growing (albeit slowly and in a downward direction) and they don’t want to jeopardize losing this vote. But they’re realistic and everyone knows this is a challenging segment that needs to be made aware of their limitations and to prove it the first slide talks about traffic accidents and how we (In case you’ve forgotten, 80 year olds) run into things or get run into more often than any other segment of the population. Nothing gets your attention like a statistic showing driving is the fastest way for us to get to visit our hospital.
The first item on the agenda is checking the boxes on the form they mailed you. First question, did your (I’m paraphrasing) eye doctor say you need glasses to drive? You look around the room, everyone’s wearing glasses; just about everyone thinks about the question. You can read their minds, ‘If I check YES will this fail me?’ But you quickly realize that if you check NO, they’ll just take off your glasses and you won’t even be able to find the paper let alone check the box.
The next question has the same level of difficulty, did your doctor say you shouldn’t drive? Again, this draws long moments of contemplation, ‘If I check YES will this fail me?’ Everyone figures out checking NO is the safer bet. I wouldn’t put it past these wily octogenarians to intentionally avoid a doctor’s appointment just so they could honestly answer NO.
‘Well, during my last checkup, which I drove to I might add, my doctor said I had the drive (love that word) of a younger man.’
I can just picture it.
Forward thinking 75 year old:
‘Man, my knees hurt and my hip has practically dissolved.’
Spouse: ‘Go see the doctor, you probably need your knee and hip replaced.’
Forward thinking 75 year old:
‘No, they’re not that bad, a couple of OxyContin mixed in with my fiber and one of those motorized chairs that lifts your bum to get you up and I’ll be on my feet in no time. I’ll go see him in 5 years.’
You can’t help but look around the room and do a mental check on the capability of the attendees. Ignoring yourself, you’d immediately flunk half of them. The pallor of the gentleman opposite me, the one who needed help pushing his walker, the one who had his daughter wait outside with the paddles, would be generously described as near-death grey. How does he get a pass? How do I avoid him on the highway?
So on to the eye test. This is a physical test, no more lying. You go one at a time so everybody pays attention.
You peer into a device that looks vaguely like the thing some shoe stores used to have to let you see how well your shoes fit.
‘Do you see a number?’ asks the instructor.
‘Yes’
‘What’s the number?’
‘125468’ You can feel the crowd’s mouths move, memorizing this number.
‘Now for the flashing light. Do you see the light flashing?’
‘Yes.’
‘Tell me, is it to your right or left?
‘Left.’
Again, everyone starts memorizing the direction; the government wouldn’t be that mean to do this randomly would they?
Next person.
‘Yes.’
‘What is it?’
‘536531’
A collective ‘damn’ murmurs across the room.
‘Now for the flashing light. Do you see the light flashing?’
‘Yes.’
‘Tell me, is it to your right or left?
No verbal response, the participant waves a hand. The instructor looks up and translates it as a left. And so it continues.
‘Do you see the number?’
‘Yes.’
‘What is it?’
‘42567’
‘It’s a 6 digit number, try again.’
‘42567’
‘What’s the number after the 7?’
Long pause.
‘42567’
‘Lets move onto the flashing light. Do you need your glasses?’
‘No.’
Your immediate impression is this guy is trying to pile up points (‘I’m a young 80, why am I here?’) and balances his glasses on the top of his forehead.
‘What’s the number?’
‘I need my glasses.’
So now it’s my turn. Since I have lots of hair I decide to show my obvious youthful ability and simply rattle off the number and say the appropriate left or right and go and sit down. All in a minute. The general consensus around the room is that I’m a jerk.
At this point I should point out that it would be a good idea to bring some reading material with you.
Now on to the slide show.
I mentioned earlier that statistics are presented that strongly suggest you’re in the segment that has a high probability of not making it home without piling into something.
The subsequent slide discusses when you should seriously consider giving up driving. A shaking of heads, however imperceptible, rings the room.
‘Apart from your doctor and/or optometrist, who else could help you with this?’
Dead silence.
‘How ‘bout family or friends?’ queries the instructor.
You can clearly hear, ‘I don’t think so.’ This option will never leave the room.
Now on to the written test. Everything is above board, they show you the test and the answers!
The instructor holds up a piece of paper.
‘I will be distributing these papers but I don’t want you to turn them over.’ She immediately turns over the paper to show the written instructions on the other side with a blank space below. Nothing is hidden; this is above board Ontario.
‘When you receive this paper, and please don’t turn it over yet, write your name on the blank side.’
And then it hits you, you’re in kindergarden.
From the back of the room a helpful attendee turns to his neighbour. ‘Write your name on the paper.’
Another helpful attendee, ‘Did you write your name?’ ‘Where?’
I can feel the instructor sag a bit.
First off, you will be asked to draw a clockface indicating 10 after 11. And there it is, for all to see, illustrated on the screen. You decide that even a person with galloping dementia, as long as she or he had some level of short term memory, without a clue as to what was going on, could easily duplicate what was, a second ago, displayed on the screen.
But here’s the crusher, you have 5 minutes to complete this herculean task. Wouldn’t you be a bit concerned if you couldn’t knock this off in 30 seconds? Or maybe you’re in a digital world and 10 after 11 is 11:10.
My reading reverie (I met the 30 second challenge.) is shattered by, ‘3 minutes, you have 3 minutes!’
I look around, people are still drawing. How do they get to pass? How do I get to avoid them on the highway?’
I’m brought back to the moment with, ‘30 seconds, you have 30 seconds to go.’ I decide not to draw a second clockface.
Now the second test, crossing out the ‘H’s. You have six lines of letters with ‘B’s and ‘E’s and the other letters that look like ‘H’s intermingled with those tricky ‘H’s. You’re to cross out or strike out with a single slash, all the ‘H’s.
This option stalls the process.
‘Can I cross one and just slash the other?’
Your mind starts to melt. Maybe this is the test: can you physically handle nausea?
My mind rolls back several years:
‘Well Roger, what did you do in kindergarden today?’
“I crossed out some ‘H’s.”
‘Good boy, and how did you do?’
‘I got them all, no omissions.’
‘Well done, if your grandpa could have done that he’d be driving today.’
The excruciating edification finally ends, the instructor collects the papers and starts to mark them.
You wait.
‘Fred Kywinski III,’ she calls, turning to the one saddled to his walker,
‘Congratulations, you passed.’
Fred can’t stop beaming. It’s like he’s being recognized with a post graduate degree for solving a challenging problem in quantum mechanics.
You’re given a sealed envelope with your results that you’re not to open. Only the service Ontario agent, whom you have to see to get your permanent licence, is certified to unseal licked envelopes. You can feel that this could pose too strong a temptation for some of the more curious attendees.
To drive the point home, the instructor chides,
‘If you open it, you’ll have to come back.’ This cements the message.
I didn’t stick around to see if anyone had ‘officially’ failed. I wanted to beat those that had passed out of the parking lot.
Epilogue
We do this again in two years but then there’s a real driving test. You have to get in a car, start it and drive it having turned your head more than 10 degrees. You get the feeling that few of us will see that day.