Driving into town on Bloomingdale Ave, the light at the Church Street Extension turned red and I stopped behind two cars.

As I waited for the light to change, I looked to my right and a strange feeling of deja vu came over me. Something important, far in the distant past, had taken place here, but for the life of me, I couldn’t remember what.

I tried to shrug it off, but it nagged me like a bad tooth. What could it have been?

The car behind me blew its horn and I snapped out of my musing. The light had already turned green while I’d been sitting there, lost in space.

I took off, but an unsettled feeling stayed with me. Something had happened there. I thought about it, then tried not to think about it, then thought some more, tried not to think some more and suddenly it hit me: On a sunny July day in 1964, much like that one, I’d parked at that stretch of curb to take my driver’s test.

The path to my driver’s license was unusual — if not unique — in the annals of American Boyhood.

On the day of his 16th birthday, every guy I knew sprinted to the DMV to get his learner’s permit. Then, as soon after that as he could, he took his driver’s test. To them, a driver’s license was not just a legal certificate, but a tribal totem proclaiming them to be equal to, if not greater than, a War Chief.

I, on the other hand, couldn’t have cared less about driving. The borders of my world were the limits of My Home Town, and I could get anywhere I wanted therein by bicycle or shank’s mare.

After high school, all the guys were crazed with The Promise of Lake Placid’s bistros and fleshpots, and a driver’s license was their ticket to them. All of which also meant doodle-squat to me.

First, I hated the taste of alcohol, so I didn’t drink. Second, I graduated from high school at 17 and looked maybe 12, so even if I’d wanted to go clubbing, no gin mill in the hemisphere would’ve let me cross its sacred threshold, let alone serve me anything stronger than milk. This was in stark contrast to my classmates, an uber-virile lot who’d been drinking with impunity in all the area bars since their first communion.

All of which resulted in me getting my permit … and then letting it expire three times in a row.

When push came to shove

Finally, She Who Must Be Obeyed put her foot down.

SWMBO was, of course, my mother.

“Listen, Bozo,” she said, “once again your permit’s about to expire.”

“Yeah, I know,” I said.

“But this time you’re getting your license before it does.”

“Why?” she repeated with a sneer. “Just in case, that’s why.”

In my family, “Just In Case” was a secret code. It stood for disasters so horrific that their mere mention could make them come true.

So in the case of my driver’s license, JIC might mean my mother and I were driving out in the boonies at night when she suddenly had a heart attack and I had to take the helm — legally.

Or maybe the Cossacks had just plundered Malone and were now heading south on Route 30.

Or perhaps a volcano erupted in the Pacific that dwarfed Mount Tambora and the world would get plunged into a deep freeze that’d make 1816’s Year Without a Summer look like a balmy spring day. Though how a driver’s license could spare any of us from freezing our culo was beyond me.

No matter — she said I was getting my license. And because I didn’t want to celebrate my recent high school graduation by being cold, hungry and homeless, I would.

From what I’d heard, passing the driver’s test was a lead pipe cinch. In fact, I’d known only one person who’d failed it — my pal Harry Pierce.

Harry had approached the test the way he did with everything — with a level of confidence that would’ve made Gunther Gebel-Williams look like a panty waist.

A few days before his test, I asked him if he worried about it. He laughed.

“Worry?” he said. “About a sure thing?”

He shook his head and made a “Pffuh” sound of consummate contempt.

Immediately, the alarm bell in my head sounded. If I knew nothing else, I knew this much: There was no such thing as a sure thing. In any endeavor the odds might be overwhelmingly in your favor, but that’s still not a guarantee. And anyone who thinks it is setting himself up for a big-time beatdown from the Goddess Fortuna.

Suffice it to say, I kept my insight to myself, where it belonged, since it would’ve fallen on deaf ears anyway.

Several days went by, then several more, and Harry hadn’t said anything about his driver’s test. Back in the stone age of communication, results of your driver’s test were sent by snail mail, so it would’ve taken a day or two to receive them. After a bunch more days passed and Harry still hadn’t told me the good news, I figured rather than him being uncharacteristically modest, he’d failed. Finally, I asked him.

“I couldn’t believe it,” he said.

“The schmuck flunked me,” he said.

“He flunked you?” I asked, trying to look amazed. “Why?”

“It was personal,” he said. “He just didn’t like me.”

“But he musta had a reason,” I said.

“He went out of his way to find one,” he said.

“What was it?” I said.

“I went through a stop sign,” he said.

“You went through a stop sign?” I said.

“Never saw it, musta been a car or tree or something blocking it,” he said. “But that’s the only mistake I made. Did everything else perfectly.”

“Yeah,” I said, “but running a stop sign can cause a major wreck.”

“Like I said, it was personal,” he said. “The SOB was out to get me. I mean, who did he think he was — Sterling Effin Moss?”

I shrugged, noncommittally. Could’ve meant Yes, No, Who cares? I figured he could interpret it how he wanted.

Frankly, I’d had enough of driver’s test convo. I’d be taking my test the next week, and I wasn’t the least bit confident about passing it. I was a cautious driver and knew I wouldn’t speed or go through a stop sign or turn without signaling, or anything like that. But one driving skill eluded me completely, and it bugged me so much, I tried never to think about it, for fear of becoming completely unglued.

It was so traumatic that it bugs me to write about it, even now. So I won’t … at least not till next week.

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