Learning to Drive... Him Crazy Read Free Page A

way and I'm not sure I could change now if I wanted
to."
    "I hope you never do. Not many men have such
manners any more."
    "I'm just an old fashioned man, I
guess."
    "Nothing wrong with that," she said. "My
friend, Kelli, says I was born about a hundred years late. She
keeps telling me I need to catch up with the times."
    "It sounds like we might get along just
fine," he said, with a hopeful look in his eyes.
    Over dinner he told her about himself, as he
had promised. He said that while he was in college getting his
criminal justice degree, he took the training to give driver's
license examinations for the state, and worked there while in
school. He still filled in for them now and then if they need help
and it fit in with his schedule.
    She also learned that although he and his
brother Cal grew up close by, their parents now lived in Arizona,
which was better weather for their mother's arthritis. He'd always
wanted to be a police officer, and hoped eventually to make
detective.
    "So what do you do, Alana, and how have you
survived living in Pennsylvania without a driver's license?"
    "I work for an event planner."
    "What do you do there?"
    "I answer phones and do the scheduling and
miscellaneous things. To answer your other question, I take the bus
or a cab everywhere I go. If I can ever manage to get my license,
I'm going out on my own as an event planner."
    "A license is all that's holding you
back?"
    "Yes. Marilyn, the lady I work for, is ready
to retire. I think she would have already except for me. She lets
me basically do it all except the legwork. You have to go and check
on a lot of things in person, see what they look like, things like
that, and pick things up and deliver them. I get everything set up,
and she does the delivery and drop offs. We usually go together to
look at the site and things."
    "So all you need is your license. How long
have you been trying to get it?"
    "I graduated from college two years ago. I
knew what I wanted to do, but I didn't have any money to buy a car,
so I did the next best thing. I went to work for Marilyn."
    "That was a good idea."
    "I found this apartment that's close enough
I can walk to work. It's a small apartment, but it's cheap enough
that I've been able to save money for a car. Once I got enough for
a down payment, I got my permit. My friend, Kelli, drove me there
today and has been my licensed driver. She lets me use her car to
practice, and to take my test. I've tried twice now, but you saw
how it went."
    "Yeah, I did. Did Kelli teach you how to
drive, or has someone else been working with you?"
    "That's part of my problem. Kelli's been
trying, but she keeps saying she's no teacher, and I really
appreciate her effort and she's my best friend and all, but she's
right, she's not much of a teacher. She tells me what I did wrong
after I did it instead of before."
    "That explains some of the things I had to
count you down for today."
    "Probably. Like what?"
    "When you stopped at the stop sign, you were
too far back. You need to stop closer to the intersection so you
can see oncoming traffic better."
    "I was afraid the front of my car would be
out in the intersection."
    "No, you need to be closer. That's where it
helps to have someone telling you these things as you're learning.
The same way with your turn signal. You turned them on too far back
from where you were turning."
    "I did?"
    "Yes, you did."
    She thought a few moments before saying,
"Then I could take the test a bunch of times and still not pass
because those are things I didn't know I was doing wrong."
    "The other time you took the test and didn't
pass, did the examiner tell you what you did wrong?"
    "Kind of. He said he took off for a couple
of my turns, and the distance between me and another car."
    "Were you too close to it?"
    "I'm not sure. That's all he said. I was so
nervous I didn't even think to ask him."
    John laid his hand over one of hers and
asked, "Would you let me help you? We can take my car out and I