I Failed the Test

A few days ago I talked about driving and bad drivers and whatnot.  TheloniousZen was kind enough to inquire about the time I failed a drivers test.  It's something I often forget about untill I think about that subject.  Yes, I failed a drivers test.  It happened.

This was me, essentially 

On that fatefull day in early 1999 ( I think) I arrived at the Econo Foods parking lot with my mother in her 1993 Honda Accord.  I had pocketed my "lucky" quarter (not sure what made me believe it was lucky, but I was a teenager, the thought of a lucky item was appealing) and was all set to take my independent road test.  First off, you had to do a series of parking maneuvers before you were going to hit the road with the tester.   I was required to pull forward to a stop bar, then put it in reverse as if to back into a parking spot.  Then, I had to pull forward and parallel park the car into another spot.  These were things I had accomplished before in drivers training and as a practice driver with my mother, but on this fateful day, everything went horribly wrong.

First off, when I pulled forward to the stop bar, I apparently was about four feet back of the line instead of actually up to it.  To this day, I can't believe I did that.  I never, ever make that mistake anymore, when I tought myself that if you line up the bottom of the side rear view mirror with the extended stop bar, you'll be right on it.  This works.  Try it out, if that's not something you've done before.  So anyway, I was like four feet too far back.  To me, that's not that big of a deal, but apparently to this jackass administering the test, it was.

Next, I had to back into the parking spot that was surrounded by road cones.  There were seven cones set up for me to fit the car in.  the back five had big sixfoot polls sticking out of them, so naturally, I aimed for the one I could see.  Turns out that the front two didn't have sticks in them, so since I couldn't see them, I totally ran the closest front one over.  I was aiming for what turned out to be the middle cone.  I guess it made it worse because I didn't notice that I ran the cone over and kept on driving into the spot.  WHOOPS...

So yeah, then I had to parallel park, which I TOTALLY NAILED.  First try, I parked that bitch right in there.  Still to this day, I'm a pretty decent parallel parker.  So the next part was to take the car to the road with the tester in the passenger seat so see how well I could handle the road.  But we never got that far.  The dude obviously had a hot date, because he said that I did so bad on the parking lot tests, that I have failed already, and I would have to reschedule the test and repay for the test.  He said that running over that cone was the worst thing I could do, because what if that was some kid.  My thought was "MAYBE DUMB KIDS SHOULDN'T PLAY UNDERNEATH THE TIRES OF MY CAR, EH?"

So that was that.  I failed my drivers test.  I didn't drive AT ALL for one entire year, until I decided to try taking the test again, this time with a different tester.  With zero practice and zero hours driven for an entire year, I passed the test the second time...Which makes me really hate that asshole who administered my first test.  There were no sticks in the cones closest to me, damn it!  How could I see that?  All the other cones had sticks in them, why not the front ones?

So much for that lucky quarter.  I went home and chucked it against a wall.  I probably then spent it on a bottle of Faygo, or something.  Proved to me that there is no such thing as lucky quarters or whatever.  It taught me to not rely on luck in those situations, and if you want to succeed, you have to just be good at it, not lucky.  

The Promise

I'm going to write a new post tomorrow.  I came here to tell you that because I don't want to lie to you, so I'll actually write.  I have no problem lieing to myself, which I do all the time.  No, if I really want to write a new post, I have to come here and say I'M GOING TO WRITE A NEW POST TOMORROW.  

I Can't Drive (at all)

They say Tennessee drivers are some of the worst in the nation.  According to the results of a test done by GMAC insurance in 2010, Tennessee is the 33rd worst state of drivers.  Anyone who lives here will cry bullshit, as these morons are the worst drivers I've ever seen.  It's common knowledge to everyone who drives here and have driven other places that these are top 5 worst drivers in the nation.  It didn't really don on me exactly why until Friday night at dinner at P.F. Chang's.

Our waiter was originally from Michigan as I am.  He was talking about how awful the drivers are here, and he knew why.  You see, in Tennessee, you don't really have to do a whole lot to get a drivers license.  All you have to do is go to the DMV and take a written test and an eye exam.  Then, if you pass that, you get your learners permit.  You must log 50 hours of driving time (10 of which have to be at night) with an adult over the age of 21 in the passenger seat, wait 180 days, be 16 years old, and BAM, your a legal driver in the state of Tennessee.

Now, according to my research, that's all it takes.  I could be wrong, and anyone who lives here if free to correct me, but I'm pretty sure that's it.  In Michigan, you had to take drivers training, log so many hours of on the road testing with the instructor, pass a written exam, and then you could get your level one permit.  Then you had to log so many hours with an adult and you have that level one license for six months.  Once you get passed that, you had to go to the level two classes, pass another test, and then you could get your level two license.  Then, you had to go take a road test with an independent, third-party road testing organization (which I totally failed the first time at the age of 16).  Then blah blah blah blah.  You get the idea.

You have a lot more hoops to jump though in Michigan to get a license.  This of coarse makes you learn how to drive better.  While it's less of a hassle in Tennessee, the folks here didn't learn how to fucking drive, obviously.  Not that I'm a better person for having gone through all that back in Michigan, it just makes me a better driver than you.  So maybe the state needs to take a look at their system of getting a drivers license in the first place and perhaps do a bit of upgrading?  After all, the road is a dangerous place, especially when everyone is just winging it.  By the way, on the list I mentioned above, Michigan was the 37th worst drivers, so that's not all that much better than Tennessee, but it's still better.  And like I said, anyone who drives here would agree these test results are total bullshit.  Tennessee has the worst drivers, okay?  I just told you why.  

Drink More Water

Okay, so even though my little one at home is the most important thing in my life, and that's all I really want to talk about sometimes, I'm not going to do that.  No, I think that that would be alright, I guess, if I wanted to do that.  But I want to shake it up still.  This is not a single-subject blog.  So, expect the occasional Posts About Babies, but I'd say they will be about as frequent as they were when she was in the womb.

That being said, I want to talk about water, and more specifically, your recommended daily intake of water.  As I grew up, I learned the importance of getting that eight glasses of water every day for essential well-being, or whatever.  I heard that stat over and over, and somewhere along the line I decided that I should probably follow that guideline.  After all, they don't pound that sort of information into your brain for their health. It's for your health, ya turkey.

I recall my brother going on a diet where he cut out soda pop and some fast food, and started pounding bottles of water.  He lost a good amount of weight just by doing that.  Well, I started pounding that water like my brother did, but never got the dramatic results he achieved, although I did notice a marked increase in energy level and all that jazz.  I fall in and out of love with water drinking, mainly because water is sort of, well, boring.  Drinking water, while good for you, doesn't always satisify the pallet quite like a delicious coke (or diet coke, or whatever drink you choose for that matter.)  I think it's because I was brought up drinking flavor instead of water that I get bored with water.  But as an adult I know better than to just drink for pleasure.  Water is pretty important for your body to function properly.

But what happens if you don't drink your recommended daily water amount?  I knew a girl that I used to work with that never, EVER, drank water.  It was pop or juice or coffee or milk or beer but never water.  How can this be?  I mean, they say that you must drink water to function, how did she not keel over and die? I mean, you get hydrated from other liquids, I guess, but it's ain't water. She couldn't stand the taste of water, as crazy as that sounds.  Well she functions just fine with out H2O, so what's with this "you must drink eight glasses" business?

I am a proponent of drinking your daily 8ish glasses, because it makes me feel better.  Hydration is the most important thing you can do for youself, mainly because if you don't get it, you will die.  You can survive without food for much longer than water.  You need water to live.  Bottom line.  So go fill that cup up right now with some nice, cold water and think about how good it makes you feel later.  But I guess you can drink whatever you want and you won't explode from dehydration...So maybe get a glass of apple juice if you don't like the taste of water.  

Posts About Babies: She's Here

I have hesitated to jump back into this thing, because I know what I want to write will be lengthy as hell.  I want to go through the entire story of how little baby Evelyn got born on Thursday, April 28th, but man, I just haven't found the time.  I have a moment here to stop by and say that things are going great here, but it's been busy, like I said before.

They said you won't sleep when you have a newborn, but I'd have to say that hasn't totally been the case thus far.  No, she sleeps pretty good, even if we have to wake up only twice during the night.  Apparently, that's pretty good.  I wouldn't know, this is the first time I've done this, obviously.  Most of the things that have been going on have been tweeted, and I'm 99.9% sure that everyone that reads this thing also follows me there.  If you don't, man, you really should.

So, basically she was born via C-section at 10:46 a.m. on last Thursday.  She came out beautiful and stayed that way.  Seriously, she is adorable.  She is the cutest thing I've ever seen.  When she was born, she started crying before I could see her, and my eyes were as big as saucers.  I couldn't believe she was finally here.  When the let me see here, I nearly fell over from the emotion of everything.  I was scared, happy, nervous and excited in one ball of emotion, helped along by the fact that I hadn't slept in 27 hours, or whatever.  None of my sleeplessness problems were evident when she looked in my general direction when they were cleaning her up on that table in the operating room.  Nothing.

She sleeps.  She eats.  She craps.  She cries.  This is my life right now.  Currently, at this late hour, mom is trying to make her stop crying as she puts her into her swing.  Even though she is upset, and I want to make that crying stop, there is no sweeter sound to me than her crying voice.  Nope, none.

So my new life has finally arrived.  Having a little girl has been pretty damn cool, if I must say so.  So with that, I gotta go make a crying baby stop doing just that.  

Regret

So I haven't written anything in a few days, mainly because I know I should not have written the post I did the other day.  I feel really stupid for writing about kids names.  I do.  I should just stick to my opinions, but I realized that I'm just not the type of person who should be telling people what they should and shouldn't do.  I really shouldn't.  So in my feeling bad, I just stopped writing altogether.  I wondered if I should just shut it down, because I keep making myself feel like a jackass for saying things like that.  So after thinking about it some, I decided that the best course of action would to just keep doing what I have been doing, but just think twice before I decide to lambaste something that someone my feel very differently about.

I want to stress, I just am not the type of person to say someone else is stupid for doing something I wouldn't do.  Everyone is different, and will do different things.  There are other people out there that can write about the wrongs of society better than I can, so I'll just leave it to them.  For now, I'll stick to what I am comfortable with.

I don't know if I actually offended someone I know specifically, because no one has actually said so to me.  But the fact that that might happen made me realize what I could have done wrong here.  Bottom line, I shouldn't have written that post the other day.  I'm sorry if you took offense.  Let's move on.  

N is for Names

Now that we have let Saturday's post sink in a little, I discovered a website that puts what I was trying to say in a much better, and funnier way.  It's called Stupid Kid Names, and can be found here.  Go there and laugh at stupid people who name their kids stupid names like Kenzyngtyn, for Christ's sake...

What I wanted to talk about is shortening of peoples names.  People with normal names, and some with the unusual names as well, will often shorten them to make it easier to talk about them.  Less syllables is just easier, generally accepted and preferred way to address people. Sometimes it's not even a shortening, it's more of a common nickname for people with that name, although that seems to not be as prevalent these days, it's still true a lot of the time.

For example, people named Robert are often called Bob, for some reason.  People named Richard are called Dick.  People named Charles are called Chuck. People named William are called Bill. Why?  I honestly don't know.  I'm sure there is a reason, as there is a reason for everything.  I could look it up, but I'll just wonder aloud with you all reading along.  But nearly everyone who has a multiple-syllable name has it shortened down to one.  Hell, my given name is Bradley, but I've always been called Brad.  Jeffery, David, Christopher, Steven (or Stephen), Thomas, Michael, Timothy, Andrew, Albert and Patrick are all very common names that are very often shortened to one syllable by just about everyone I've ever known with these names.  Also, Bethany is often shortened to Beth. My wife's name is Bethany, and she goes by Bethany.  Who the Hell is Beth?

Some people have a hard time accepting when someone wants to go by their full name.  It's an interesting phenomenon.  (I just spelled phenomenon correctly on the first try, +2 points to me)  Some people catch on right away, when you see the name written down on someone you just met, and it says his name is Timothy, so you automatically call him Tim.  He might correct you saying something polite like "I usually go by Timothy."  Okay, enough said.  No problem.  I will call you Timothy.  Sometimes you don't have the luxury of asking, so you just go by what others call that person.  You pick up on the cues of others and learn what they go by.  Someone always refers someone you work with as David, you call that person David until he says "just call me Dave or D.J."  I always default to the accepted shortened name unless told otherwise.

But some people just have a hard time accepting that someone goes by their full name.  I have friends, good friends, who will forever refer to my wife as Beth.  "Is Beth coming too?"  "...Yes, she is." I say in return.  Because I understand how some people feel about it.  They're so used to defaulting to the common shortened version that using the full version is just uncomfortable.

It's all about picking up on clues from the people around you.  It's okay to call someone by their full name if they're not used to it.  If they really hate it, they'll tell you.  Some people at my current job (like my supervisor) call me Bradley all the time, because I never told them to call me anything else.  It's strange, because I would have thought they would have defaulted to my common shortened name, but they didn't.  It's the first time in my life I've been called Bradley more than Brad.

I don't know, just a thought.