Driving in Italy is scary. Getting your license is even scarier. Part Two.

Nothing makes sense in Italy.  I think that's where we left off.

Passing the written test to get an Italian driver's license is the hardest part.  Then it's time to start the driving lessons.  Having driven for 30 years in America I thought the lessons would be easy.  Instead, driving schools say they don't want to hear that you've driven.  It's a lot harder to teach an old driver to break their bad habits than it is to teach a new driver to slow down for cows that show signs of fear.

How many times do you have to hear "don't check your blind spot" before it sticks? It's a good habit in America.  We turn to check our blind spot because our teachers in 1980 told us a thousand times to check our blind spot. Here, it's against the rules. We only use mirrors and blinkers.  And we use them in a certain order.  Sometimes it's mirror/blinker and other times it's blinker/mirror. And you lose points if you don't do it in the right order.

I thought I was fortunate to have driven a stick-shift in the States, seeing that most cars in Italy are manual.  And my instructor said that I really drove quite well, but he wanted to control my shifting anyway.  I just had to rest my foot lightly on the clutch.  When he touched the clutch on the instructor's side it would come up and touch the bottom of my foot. One tap meant to shift up and two taps meant to shift down.  So instead of worrying about hitting pedestrians and bikers I was counting the taps and trying to remember if I should shift up or down.    

Bickering with the instructor with a snickering 18-year old in the backseat was a weekly event. Why an 18-year old and not a 15-year old preparing for his sixteenth birthday?  Because in Italy you can't begin the process until you're 18,  unless of course you want to drive a Vespa.  You can get a Vespa license when you're 14.  For some reason they think you're smart enough to learn the rules of the road (which are the same for a Vespa and a car) when you're 14, but you're not smart enough to drive a car until you're 18.  They say it's about the power of the vehicle.  As if you can't kill yourself on a Vespa for making a stupid decision.

While students are practicing away from the school they can be with any adult in any kind of car.  If your dad has a Ferrari, you can practice in a Ferrari.  But once you've earned your license, you fall into the categorie of neopatentato, which I translate as "baby driver." This means that the day you get your license it is illegal to drive with your dad in his Ferrari like you did the day before.  The cars must have small engines and some kind of ratio or something to something else based on weight and something else.  None of that mattered to me.  I just asked for help on what kind of convertibles fit the category.

My goal was to have my license by the end of 2019.  I'd passed the driving test on November 4.  A few lessons and the driving test seemed doable in almost two months, unless of course you're in Italy. You don't take the driving test with someone from the neighborhood school, you have to take it with an official examiner from the State. And in addition to all of the other things Italy lacks, it currently lacks examiners and they aren't willing to hire new ones.  There is a huge backlog of students ready for the test, but unable to take it.  I took most of the lessons in early November and was finally called for the test on February 19. I imagine I was probably pushed to the top of the list because I was driving my instructor mad.

On test day I went to the school to meet met my instructor and a group of kids I'd never seen before. Then the examiner arrived.  I was sure I had seen her before and I was trying to figure out if I'd been mean to her in a cafe or had cut in front of her at the supermarket.  (I don't do these things, but I had to be sure I hadn't done her wrong somewhere.) Had she come for one English lesson and we didn't like each other so she never came again? 

When it was my turn to present my documents she tried to call me, but couldn't pronounce my name.....just like the last time she couldn't pronounce my name.  And just as I was figuring out that she was the scary lady that had given me the written test in a city one hour from here she sternly said, "You were in my testing room."   And now here she was, as scary as the first time, to ride in the backseat while my instructor tapped the clutch so I'd know when to shift.

550 euros later (bringing the total to 973 euros) I had my Italian driver's license. And 30 minutes later, I didn't.  In the euphoria of the event, somewhere between entering the bus and sending the I DID IT messages and getting off the bus and unlocking my bike, I had lost my license. 

A trip to the police department has put me in the record books as the first person who has ever lost a license before it even officially existed. The officer asked me for the license number and I remembered that it was in the photos I'd sent my friends.  He put the number in the computer to block it, but it didn't show up.  I said, "It's not in the system because the scary lady that gave it to me hasn't entered it yet.  She's still in the car examining the other kids."