Unfair

I failed my driver's road test. Big fat failure. Don't get me wrong, I was driving beautifully throughout the whole test - I parallel parked perfectly, maneuvered the broken U-turn without a problem, handled the left turns and the right turns without any incidents. The tester-lady then asked me to make the next right and stop the car. Test supposed to be over.

I signal right, stop at the stop sign, and turn. Tester-lady hits the brakes on her side. "You should not have gone, see that guy?" I look to my left. A freaking homeless person is pushing a shopping cart with cans and bottles in the middle of the street. He is not crossing the street. He's not walking towards me. He's just walking in the middle of the road. Actually, he's walking away from our car. "You fail."

These are the emotions I feel at the moment. They are pretty much the same as the five stages of grief that psychiatrist Elizabeth Kubler-Ross wrote about in her renowned book "On Death and Dying". I go through death and dying emotions every time my ego's hurt. Like today. Here we go:

1) Denial. ("No way!!")
2) Anger. ("What the fuck?!?!?!")
3) Bargaining. ("But...but....but...")
4) Depresssion. ("This blows")
5) Acceptance. ("Oh well...")

I haven't gotten to the fifth stage. Just knowing Paris Hilton has a driver's license and I don't... that makes me angry. I bet you there were no homeless people around when Paris got her license.

I DID NOT GET MY LICENSE BECAUSE A HOMELESS PERSON WAS PUSHING HIS CART IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD!!

Psychiatric Stuff

My quest for getting into the medical field has taken me to the psychiatric ward. Not as a patient but as an observer, shadowing yet another DPT as she is going on with her work day.

In the elevator ride up to the inpatient psych floor I felt exhilarated. I was going to see REAL crazy people. Sure, I've seen crazy people before, several times - on the subway, at the gym, in offices. But to be in the psych ward, that's another story, that's official; if you have a room here, you must be nuts.

The first patient we ran into did not disappoint. He was shuffling along the hallway in his socks, unkempt, head cocked to one side. Occasionally he stopped and stared into space. But where were the rest of them?

Turned out that most of the patients blended in quite well with the hospital staff. Both parties were wearing regular clothes. The only way to tell "crazy" apart from "normal" was the white patient wrist band. I looked at the wrist-banded people with awe, many questions flying through my mind. What's wrong with you? What's happened to you? Is there any hope? Will you get better? These were the exact same thoughts that went through my mind the first time I met a person who unabashedly admitted she was a registered Republican.

Our first patient was a bipolar elderly woman who had been admitted after feeling suicidal. To top it all off she also had trouble walking. "You know, they're letting me go home on Monday," she said as the PT had her do calf-raises in the hallway, "do you think I'm ready for that?"
"Yes I do, I'm happy for you. How do you feel?" the physical therapist replied.
"Well, I guess ok. Much better than when I got here. I can hardly even remember."
"I was here. You are doing much better. I think you will be fine going home."
"That's good," and then she lowered her voice to a whisper, "because my new room mate over there... she's crazy...screams at night."

I looked over at her room mate. She was sitting on her bed, reading. She's young, college-age, and pretty. No hint of any screaming or thrashing around. Just reading and looking pretty. Her side of the room was messy, socks strewn about, bed unmade, tea cups everywhere, glasses of water, newspaper on the floor. Just like my bedroom at home!!

And that's when I remembered what Amy, my nurse friend, once said: "You know, there IS a huge difference between people who are psychotic and us who are just neurotic. But sometimes it feels like a very thin line."

Drrrrive

I had my third driving lesson today. The instructor makes me turn left a lot. All he says throughout the hour is: "turn left" and "left" and "make another left." He says that I turn too sharply or something. He also tells me to watch where I'm going. I have an old driver's license that expired years ago; it's not like I've never driven a car before, buddy. I still have to rehearse left turns.

Other things he makes me practice is parallel parking. That's ok. I'm not great at it, but I'm not terrible either. I can totally do it.

The weirdest thing he has me do is the "broken U-turn". At first I thought he said "Brooklyn U-turn" and I said: "Wow, there's a BROOKLYN U-turn, what is that like??" But there's not one. Anyway, here's what I don't get: Why teach students to make U-turns in the city?? In my book, nobody should make U-turns in NYC. Just drive around the freaking block if you went down the wrong street. No, let's screw up traffic even more and have a bunch of idiots make U-turns left and right. I really don't get that.

Sleepy

I've fallen asleep a couple of times at work. This might not seem like a big deal if you work in an office or something, but I do massage. I've fallen asleep massaging. Just dosing off, but still. I don't think any clients have noticed yet. This only happens if I have a 7:30am appointment, by the way. I have to get used to getting up early. Although I only need to get up early once or twice a week. Anyway.

...what...huh?

When I'm old I hope I'll remember that when I was young, say in my twenties and thirties, I used to forget things all the time.

For example, I head to the bedroom from the living room and on the way over I forget why I'm going there. Or, I can never find my keys or my metro card. Or, I can't remember why I went to the store, for what...what do I need...what do I need? I buy stuff, go home, and realize that the reason I really went to the store was to pick up toilet paper, the one thing I didn't get.

Or today, I was craving a Sprite Zero (they're good) and headed to the deli. I picked up the Sprite, paid for it, went home and... where's my Sprite? It was nowhere to be found. Went back to the deli - and there it was, still on the counter.

This is what I shall remember when I'm old: poor memory is nothing new. Just how it's always been. (Have I written about this before...?)

DM f-ing V

A few years ago when I went to the Department of Motor Vehicles to renew my NY State ID, there was a five hour wait for service. A FIVE hour wait (the estimated waiting time is printed on the ticket you pick up when you enter, that's how you know). I actually walked back home, took a shower, read a book, had lunch, watched TV. I returned to the DMV just as they called my number.

Yesterday I went to the DMV again, this time to get my driver's license permit. Everything went smoothly. I took a written test for my driver's license (passed it), got my picture taken (looking fabulous as always), did my vision test (passed it), and paid the fee (credit card approved). All within 45 minutes. Unbelievable.

The only weird part was that the DMV lady who was processing my paper work kept falling asleep. That's never good. At first I wasn't sure what was going on, she just stopped writing and kept the pen glued to the approval document. Was there something wrong with my information?? After twenty seconds or so she would come to it and start writing again. Then she'd dose off again. I became a little unsure of how to act. Should I tap her shoulder and wake her up? "Excuse me, can you just finish writing down the information that will go on MY DRIVER'S LICENSE, and nap later....?"

I decided not to reach over and touch this woman. I decided it would be better to pretend nothing is going on. She's not asleep, she's handling my stuff perfectly.

The dosing-off episodes continued and I started to worry that the lady might be experiencing partial seizures. The symptoms can be quite similar. How awful of me to ignore her seizures! What do I do, what do I do, what do I do, my license, my license, my license, I want my license (or something less selfish).

Luckily, another DMV person walked by and woke the lady up. Sleeping lady with my important documents muttered: "Maaaan, I'm sooo tired today....."

I still got out of there within 45 minutes. Unbelievable.

Babies galore

Every block around where I live and work is crowded with couples and their babies. Strollers, pregnant ladies, daddies with babybjorn carriers, babies crying, babies laughing, babies talking gibberish, babies taking their first steps, more pregnant ladies - this is what I see ALL day long.

Park Slope has long been known as a "baby-stroller-neighborhood" (at least for the past 10 years or so), but the babies are spreading. For example, Carroll Gardens currently has the highest concentration of babies between 1-3 years old per square mile in the country - in the country. How did this happen? Why in Brooklyn?

My theory is that all the hipsters that lived in Williamsburg and Dumbo back in the '90s finally matured and got fancy jobs. No way any self-respecting Brooklynite would move to the suburbs to do the 'family-thing', so they all they coupled up and moved to the brownstone belt to procreate. I think that's cool. I do. I'm not against any of this... Although the whole baby thing has gotten a little bit out of control, can't deny that...

I have to go snuggle with my cats now.