Eleven years young

I promised that I would blog tonight. Half past midnight counts as "tonight," doesn't it?

Anyway, I'm going to tell a story.

In my province, we have something called graduated licensing. That means that when a person learns to drive, he passes through a number of phases. First, he takes a written test. He receives a learner's license. A year after he's received that, he takes a road test. He then receives a novice license. A novice license functions as a regular license except that:
- one must display a "novice driver" sign (an N);
- one's license may be yanked for a smaller number of tickets;
- one must have a blood alcohol content of zero; and,
- one must not drive more than one unrelated passengers.

Fair enough. Two years later, the driver may take an hour-long road test and obtain a full license.

My year was the first to enter graduated licensing, some eleven years ago.

Last week, a friend of my brother's had his license suspended for two months over a minor novice-related violation. And I thought, my goodness, that would be bloody inconvenient. After all, I have children to haul around. Granted, my children are all related to me, and I've never had a ticket (kinehura), but it's bound to happen sooner or later. And so anxiety about the one (losing license) overcame my anxiety about another (road test) and I called to schedule a road test.

Only, let's see, nine years past due.

But it was more complicated than that. You see, it turns out that my license had been expired. And I've been driving about on that expired license for some, let's see, seven months. They cheerfully invited me to come in to the DMV and have it renewed, post-haste. The nice man also scheduled my road test.

I passed the road test. I have a full license. I also have an award, of sorts.

The DMV said that this is the longest anyone has ever held a novice license.