Justin Halpern: More Sh*t My Dad Says

In fact, I had done such a good job of it that when I turned sixteen, making me eligible for a driver’s license, my parents had to force me to make an appointment to take the test. Unlike most teenagers, who long for the day they can get behind the wheel and drive with their friends to parties—or park somewhere and make out with their dates—I was indifferent about the prospect of getting my license. I lived less than a mile from school, and even closer to my friends’ houses. With everywhere I went already within walking distance, a driver’s license seemed like an unnecessary goal that could only be reached through an unbearably taxing process.

Nevertheless, at my parents’ insistence, I looked up driving schools in the Yellow Pages and signed up for a course near my house that consisted of one two-hour lesson a week, for six weeks. My instructor was a skinny guy in his midtwenties who had a shaved head that was always peeling from sunburns and who could only have smelled more like marijuana if he’d been made of it. The training vehicle was a mid-’80s tan Nissan that had working brakes on the passenger side; he often got his jollies slamming them on for no reason and then between wheezing laughs saying, “You were all like ‘I’m in control of the car’ and then I hit the brakes and shit and you were all like ‘Whaaaat?’” During one lesson, he had me drive him to “a buddy’s house,” then disappeared inside for half an hour; when he emerged he was so high he couldn’t remember the way back to the driving school. We ended up driving around aimlessly for forty minutes while he told me about his life’s goal, which was to prove that humans and sea lions could coexist on the beach. His plan centered on “eating a bunch of fish in front of them, so that, you know, they can see that we like fish, too.”

Still, I managed to glean some driving knowledge from the course. So, one overcast Saturday morning in early October, I hopped into the passenger seat of my dad’s silver 1986 Oldsmobile Brougham and we headed for the Clairemont Mesa DMV to take my driver’s test.

“You excited?” my dad asked.

“Yeah, I guess.”

“You guess? This is your independence right here. You get a license, you can take this car and never come back if you wanted.”

“I could do that without a license,” I said.

“No you couldn’t, because it’d be illegal.”

“Well, technically, so would taking your car and never coming back. That’s grand theft auto,” I said.

“Okay, let’s just both shut up until we get to the DMV.”

A few minutes later we pulled up to the tan one-story government building, which looked like the place where happiness went to die. Like most sensible Americans, my dad hates the DMV, and when we entered the lobby to find it packed to the gills with sweaty, tired, impatient people, he started nervously shifting his weight from foot to foot and biting his fingernails.

“Look at this fucking place. Everyone smells like dog shit, standing around like they’re in Russia waiting for a loaf of fucking bread. Why the fuck am I here? You’re the one taking the test.” A minute later: “That’s it. I can’t do this. You’re on your own,” and just like that he took off for the exit. Before I could even respond he was sitting on a bench outside, reading the paper.

After a few minutes in line, I was handed a number by a morbidly obese receptionist. I sat down in the waiting area, which was filled with teenagers and the oldest people I had ever seen in my life. Thirty minutes later my number was called.

When I returned to the administration desk, I was greeted by a tan Korean man in his late forties wearing a white lab coat.

“Halpern, Justin?” he said, reading off a chart.

“I prefer to go by Justin Halpern,” I joked.

He stared at me silently for a couple seconds. “This way,” he said, then walked out a set of double doors and into the parking lot.

When we got into the car I tensed up. I hadn’t been nervous before, but sitting in the driver’s seat of my dad’s Oldsmobile, without him in it, made me think for the first time about how exciting it would be if I were actually able to drive somewhere on my own. I could drive to movies, or school, or even on a date… and dates were where hand jobs happened. The array of opportunities flooded my mind, and I couldn’t focus on the DMV examiner’s nasal voice as he barked directions at me. I was gripping the steering wheel so tight my knuckles cramped, and every time he’d give me a direction, I repeated it back to him like we were doing an Abbott and Costello routine.

“Left here,” he said.

“Left here?”

“Yes. Left here.”

“Left here.”

“Stop that,” he snapped.

The low point of the test came when I tried to merge onto the freeway. In a panic, I drifted onto the shoulder, doing twenty-five miles an hour. “SPEED UP AND MERGE!” the examiner shouted. “OH MY GOD, SPEED UP AND MERGE.” I had a feeling I’d failed—a feeling confirmed when I pulled back into the DMV parking lot and my administrator could only manage to spit, “YOU ARE… FAIL.”

He got out of the car and slammed the door. I was mortified; any excitement I had about getting my driver’s license evaporated immediately, and I decided once again that getting my license didn’t really mean anything. After all, you don’t need a license to eat pizza and watch old movies.

“It’s not a big deal,” I told my dad in the parking lot. “Honestly, I don’t really even care. I’ll just take it again sometime.”

“Son, you’re the only sixteen-year-old I’ve ever met who doesn’t give a shit that he failed his driver’s test. What do you think that says about you?”

“I’m levelheaded.”

“That ain’t what it says,” he said, shaking his head.

In the days that followed, I didn’t tell any of my friends that I’d failed my test; it was still too sore a subject.

That Friday, as I sat next to Aaron while we copied each other’s answers before our first-period English class, a shadow fell on my desk. I looked up to see a classmate named Eduardo standing over me. I could count on one hand the number of times Eduardo had spoken to me in my life, but he’d made quite an impression. He was tall and thick, with slicked-back black hair that always looked like he’d just gotten out of a pool. He was also the only kid in our entire eleventh grade who had a real mustache. Those of us who were developed enough to even have facial hair grew thin, wispy mustaches generally associated with child molesters. But Eduardo’s looked like a push broom, and it was terrifying. I only could assume he was there for one thing.

“Do you want to copy my homework?” I asked, handing him a piece of paper.

“What? Fuck nah. I do my homework on time. That’s racist, fool,” he said.

“Sorry, I was just trying to—”

“You know my cousin Jenny?” Eduardo interrupted.

“Jenny who?” I asked. There were lots of Jennys at our school, and I wanted to make sure I committed no further missteps in this conversation.

“Jenny Jiminez. She’s in your public speaking class, fool.”

“Jenny Jiminez is your cousin?” I was surprised. Jenny was sweet, and she had absolutely no facial hair.

“I’m Mexican. Everyone is my cousin.”

“Ha! Look who’s racist now…” I trailed off when Eduardo didn’t even crack a smile. “Yeah, I know her. She’s cool,” I added.

“She likes your gumpy ass,” he said.

And, with that, Eduardo retrieved from his pocket a small comb with a tiny wooden handle, ran it through his mustache exactly twice, then returned it to his pocket as he walked back to his seat.

“You should ask Jenny to homecoming,” Aaron said, once Eduardo was a safe distance away.