Remember how I failed my driver’s license test?

It was Wednesday, April 16, 2003. I’d turned 16 years old two days before. Since I had baseball practice Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays — if we didn’t have a game — Wednesdays were the only days I could get to the DMV and take my license test.

The drive went great. I talked with my DMV officer the whole time. He seemed like a somewhat nice guy, albeit a bit on the brusque side. Had a couple of kids, if I recall correctly. Red hair, cropped in a tight, nearly-military style haircut.

We pulled back into the parking lot. There’d been literally zero problems. I didn’t run any red lights. I’d skillfully avoided a pair of daredevil squirrels. I’d even remembered not to cut across the parking lot, recalling a conversation with a friend of mine from school who’d told me that when she did that her instructor cautioned her to never do that in real life or you could get a ticket.

I turned, grinning huge, to get his approval.

“You did not pass.”

What!? I thought. My face felt like it caught fire.

“What!?” I half-yelled, half-yelped.

“You did not pass. You failed to come to a complete stop at the stop sign on Thomas Langston Road.”

The cruel irony of this was that I lived literally one minute away from that exact stop sign. I didn’t remember not completely stopping….but then I couldn’t remember completely stopping, either. Still….I hadn’t come close to getting in a wreck. I’d had my hands at 10-and-2. I’d gone maybe two miles per hour over the speed limit. (Something else ironic considering the tickets I’d accrue over the next few years.)

But I’d done the impossible. I’d failed my driver’s license test. I’d return to school driven by my parents tomorrow. No, worse — I’d have to call my friend to pick me up for church this afternoon!

It was, to say the least, traumatic.

But I bring all of that up to set up this video. Maybe I failed my first test, but I really, really want to know how this chick ever got her license, parking like this.