Lifemobile

by Jonathan Rintels

  After Katie closed the door, we each let out a big sigh and laughed at his extreme grumpiness. “Sorry about that,” I said, once we were beyond Benjy’s hearing. “Sometimes he lets you know exactly what he’s thinking, and sometimes you have no idea.”

  “I think I know which today was,” Katie laughed. “He’s very smart and very sweet and I know he’ll do just fine here. And our remedial math teachers are excellent with students with disabilities.”

  “I’m pleased to hear that,” I said, “because it looks like he’ll be spending a lot of time with them.” I meant it to be a joke, sort of, and we both smiled. And if I had been someone else, I might then have asked Katie if I could buy her a cup of coffee? But I was not someone else; I was a lot like Benjy, and I was in an equally foul mood. “I still don’t understand why Benjy has to even take this test,” I vented. “He took math in high school. He passed it. The state certified it. He doesn’t want to be a mathematician. He doesn’t want to be an engineer or scientist. He wants to come to college to read books. To study history and psychology and political science and public speaking and theater. He takes pleasure in those things. He might be a public speaker in the future—an evangelist for people who are different. He has a talent for it. Isn’t that a good thing to encourage? So why must we erect this hurdle for him? On his cell phone, he has a calculator that can do more math than he will ever need. On a computer, he can ask Google any math question and get the right answer back in a fraction of a second. Why must he start college, which should be such a positive, wonderful, rewarding experience for him, by being forced to repeat the torture he endured in high school? I know everyone says America needs to develop mathematicians and scientists and engineers so we can compete with China and India. But isn’t there still a place in America for someone who doesn’t know math, but loves to read and write and speak and think, and has such a unique view of the world? His eagerness to learn should be nurtured, not snuffed out by having to conform to this arbitrary pre-computer pre-calculator requirement that has absolutely nothing to do with him or his future. Why can’t this school accommodate that?”

  As my tirade grew increasingly heated, Katie’s smile slowly descended into a frown. “We are not torturing students here,” she replied testily, once I gave her a chance to speak. “And I am certainly not about snuffing out a student’s eagerness to learn, I assure you.”

  “I know, I’m sorry,” I muttered. But I couldn’t shut myself up. “It’s just that he has enough of the deck stacked against him. I don’t see why you have to make it worse.”

  “Me?!” Katie exclaimed. “I’m bending over backwards to help him. I’m breaking the rules to let him take this test over and over.”

  “I meant the school, not you personally,” I backpedaled. “I’m sorry, it came out wrong.”

  “This school—and I—we are not about erecting barriers to anyone!” Katie insisted. “Especially students with disabilities. We are about teaching and graduating educated citizens. Certainly college math will be difficult for him. But that’s not a reason he should avoid it. That’s a reason he should work hard and succeed at it, and he will, with our help. I have every confidence in him. And so should you.”

  “I do have every confidence in him,” I said. “It’s the world I’m worried about.”

  “If you’ll excuse me, I have some work to attend to,” Katie said, already striding away from me.

  That cup of coffee I’d hoped to buy Katie now appeared to be out of the question. How could I be so inappropriate and insulting? To someone who was trying to help my son, not hurt him? Was this my Asperger’s rearing its ugly head? Or was that just a way for me to excuse myself for being such a pontificating bore?

  Back at home, I brewed a big pot of coffee, sent Katie a hugely apologetic e-mail, and waited for Benjy’s phone call to come pick him up. I hoped against hope that the first words out of his mouth were anything other than, “Dad, it wasn’t all that we’d hoped for.”

  Benjy had three hours to complete the test. So when the phone rang after 90 minutes and I saw his cell phone number on the Caller I.D., I knew it was trouble.

  “Dad,” he said when I answered, his voice betraying his defeat. “It wasn’t all that we’d hoped for.”

  Returning to James Monroe, the Corvair seemed to drive as if the road were paved with glue; as it crawled along, I turned over and over in my mind the best way to react to the bad news. What could I say to stop Benjy from becoming dispirited and angry? I was so dispirited and angry myself that I was drawing a blank. I drove slower, or the glue became stickier, but eventually the Corvair found its way to the school. Outside the front door, Benjy paced, hopping up onto the tips of his Size 13’s with each step, flapping his hand and reciting. He was ready to detonate, that was obvious. He came over to the driver’s door, expecting to drive. I had to think of something fast.

  “Hold on a sec,” I said. “Let’s talk about what happened. I don’t want you to drive while you’re upset.”

  “I’m fine,” he said tersely. When I pressed him for details of the test, he bristled. “I didn’t do as well as we’d hoped,” he repeated. “I still have to take math.”

  “Okay, but which math?” I pressed. “How much math? Come on, let’s talk about this first.”

  “College math,” he replied, annoyed. “A year of college math.”

  “But what about the two and a half years of remedial math before the college math?”

  “Ms. Baxter said I don’t have to take it because I got a better score this time. But I still have to take the college math. Which I don’t want to take and I think they should not force me to take.”

  “Do I understand this right?” I said carefully. “Your score today was so good that you don’t have to take any remedial math at all?”

  “I just said that, Dad,” he said, even more annoyed. “You’re repeating what I just said.”

  “But that’s wonderful news, Benjy! You just saved yourself from taking two and a half years of remedial math! Aren’t you excited?”

  He stared at me like I was hopelessly thick. “But I still have to take a whole year of college math. Which I don’t want to do!”

  “We should be celebrating, not shouting. This is fantastic news. Let’s go anywhere you want for lunch. The finest restaurant in town. The finest in the world!” I hopped out and turned the Corvair over to him.

  “Dad?” he said, buckling his safety harness.

  “Yes?”

  “Ms. Baxter said to tell you she told you so.”

  “Okay, thanks for telling me.”

  “Did she say that because you thought I was going to fail?”

  I sighed. “To be honest, based on your other two tries, yes, I did. Sorry.”

  “That’s okay. I did, too.”

  He headed to McDonald’s, of course, driving confidently, with very little whispering to himself. There were no frenzied skink hunts or fearful discussions. He didn’t object when I asked him questions. And I had plenty of questions about this amazing reversal of fortune.

  “Was anything different about the test this time?” I asked cautiously, not wanting in any way to disparage his triumph. “I mean, no one came into the private room. Right?”

  “That would be cheating, Dad,” he said. “I just suddenly saw the answers this time, like I was back in high school and saw it all on the board. I saw all the formulas and definitions, and all the examples. It was all there in my head and I suddenly found it.”

  “You just made your college life a lot more fun,” I said, amazed.

  Benjy had other things on his mind as he placed his McNuggets order and pulled up to the drive-thru window, where a teenage boy was working. Benjy shifted in his seat to see if he could glimpse Lydia somewhere in the back, then looked over to me, discouraged.

  “Ask where she is,” I prodded.

  “Is Lydia here?” he finally asked the new window worker.

  “She got fired,” the boy replied. “You can
read all about it on Facebook.” He stuck his head out the window and checked on the line behind us. “I have to keep this line moving,” he said. “Hint, hint.”

  Benjy got the hint and handed me the McNuggets. Then he steered the Corvair away from the window to the highway.

  “Don’t you want to eat in the parking lot?” I asked. “Like we always do?”

  “No, thank you,” he said.

  Once we returned home, he went to his room and climbed under the covers. His grand celebration Chicken McNuggets remained behind on the kitchen counter, untouched.

  CHAPTER 17

  “You’re taking your road test in that?” the DMV road test examiner thundered incredulously. “They call it a Deathmobile, you know. For a very good reason.” I couldn’t tell if it was the summer heat and humidity radiating off the asphalt of the DMV parking lot or the examiner’s foul mood that caused heat waves to rise up off his shaved head.

  He looked like he could use a funny story, I thought. Like my own Deathmobile story. And then I realized his scowl and glare spoke volumes. I read the social cues. My funny story could wait.

  But Benjy didn’t recognize those same social cues; he didn’t see that we ought to immediately take the Corvair home and return with the Toyota, and then beg the examiner’s forgiveness. Instead, he had already launched a lecture on how only misinformed people believed that the Corvair was a Deathmobile.

  The examiner’s glare intensified, but Benjy’s lecture continued, turning to the question of whether the Corvair should be called the World’s Greatest Car. Finally, the examiner cut Benjy off, snapping, “Look, all I care about is whether it’s properly registered and passed the safety inspection, and if you can drive it safely. And air conditioning would be nice.” Perspiration soaked his shirt.

  I produced the car’s registration and safety inspection certificate while Benjy helpfully noted that “air conditioning was an extra-cost option in many Corvairs, except for the turbocharged model. This is not a turbocharged model, but it does not have the air conditioning option.”

  The examiner gave Benjy a long look, trying to decide whether he meant to be mocking. Benjy innocently returned the look, betraying nothing. Frustrated, the examiner snatched the Corvair’s paperwork from me. With a theatrical grunt of disdain, he appeared to find it satisfactory, shoved it back to me, then turned his attention to Benjy’s driver’s license application. “Young man, I see you have a medical condition that has been reviewed. But you must understand that, if you pass the road test today, you have a disability that may potentially impact your ability to drive safely. Therefore, you must drive accordingly at all times, and not drive when medications or a physical or mental condition would impair your ability to drive safely. Is that clear?”

  I braced for a Benjy lecture about disability and difference and discrimination that would last an eternity.

  “Yes sir,” Benjy said.

  “Well, I’ve got to say,” said the examiner, launching his own lecture on the merits of the Corvair, or lack thereof, “that driving with a disability in this car is asking for trouble. Are you familiar with the book Unsafe at Any Speed? By Ralph Nader? The Corvair is what he wrote about. It’s literally unsafe at any speed. Growing up, I lost one of my closest friends in a car accident. He was driving a Corvair.”

  Wally had warned me about genuine Corvair Haters when I bought the car—people who for whatever reason held a grudge against or could not abide the car. Now we’d finally found one.

  In the 30 days that Benjy had driven with his learner’s permit, I had vigilantly monitored him from the passenger’s seat for the nearly 80 hours he drove the Corvair—twice the minimum requirement—on all kinds of roads, day and night, in all traffic and weather conditions, save for snow and ice. Now his final hurdle to receiving his driver’s license was to pass the DMV road test. It was also his final hurdle to racing in tomorrow’s Grand Prix du Garbage. But state law prohibited a driver’s license applicant from taking his or her road test more than once per day. So this was it; Benjy’s one and only chance to obtain the license that would allow him to race tomorrow. With a genuine Corvair Hater as his examiner, I calculated the odds on his racing tomorrow at approximately zero.

  “Maybe we should go home and return with the Camry?” I asked Benjy.

  “NO!” Benjy thundered. “The Corvair is not an unsafe car! It’s not true! It’s not fair!”

  As Benjy prepared to deliver his greatest peroration yet on the goodness of all things Corvair, I put my hand forcefully on his arm and squeezed, trying to stop him.

  “OWWW!” he cried. “That hurts.”

  I ignored him and turned to the examiner. “We’re both very sorry about your friend,” I said, in a soothing diplomatic tone that I hoped didn’t come across as obvious obsequiousness, which it was. “But to be fair, while there may be a genuine difference of opinion as to the safety of Early Model Corvairs, this is a Late Model Corvair, and the Late Model’s safety has never been questioned. It has the suspension and safety improvements that Nader demanded. As you can see, ours has modern front seats, headrests, and seat and shoulder belts installed. If I felt there was any question about whether this car was safe, as his father, I wouldn’t let him drive it. And I wouldn’t drive it either.”

  I searched the examiner’s baking face to see if I’d made any headway. In that momentary silence, Benjy seized the initiative. “On August 12, 1972,” he boomed, “the United States Government wrote a letter to every Corvair owner.” Perhaps I could have squeezed his arm again to quiet him. Perhaps I could have interrupted him. And I had already tried to help—to be diplomatic and suggest getting the Camry. But he had a statement to make about injustice and fairness and tolerance. He wanted to take a stand. He was a young adult now, striving to live independently, and I wouldn’t—couldn’t—always be there for him. There would be difficult situations for him to navigate where he’d be on his own, and this might as well be one of them.

  Those were my lofty well-intended reasons for me not to intervene. I also had another reason, perhaps less well-intended and more devious. If Benjy didn’t get his driver’s license today, from this fuming examiner, then he couldn’t race tomorrow, and I wouldn’t be the Bad Guy. In fact, I realized my earlier efforts at diplomacy and mediation were misguided. Instead, I wanted Benjy to tell him every last detail about the Corvair that Google could produce, and talk until the sun went down. Bring it on, Benjy! Tell him about the Corvair fanatics who search for the first and the last Corvairs ever built (neither has been found)! Tell him anything, just keep telling him! Forgive me, Benjy, and Annie, and Dad, for I have sinned.

  Words extolling the Corvair flowed out of Benjy the way water flowed over Niagara Falls: in a ceaseless, monotonous, forceful torrent, with the beginning long forgotten and no end in sight. Judging by the examiner’s narrowing eyes, shifting feet, soaking shirt, and throat clearings, Benjy’s chance to get his driver’s license today had melted away like last winter’s ice. Yet Benjy droned on, wrapping up Corvair 101 and immediately launching into the Honors course, dispensing the most obscure Vair details known to man. Did the examiner really need to know that the final Corvair was a two-door coupe built on May 14, 1969, the 1,710,017th Corvair that GM manufactured?

  I had to tip my hat to the examiner for his patience, but finally he could take no more. What sane man could? “So let’s cut to the chase,” he insisted. “What I’m hearing is the government said that if the tires are inflated to the manufacturer’s recommendations, the car is safe, correct?”

  “Yes!” said Benjy, so enthusiastically that it came out sounding like “Duh.”

  “So show me that the tire pressures on this car are to the manufacturer’s recommendations,” said the examiner. I saw he was setting a clever trap for Benjy. “If they are not, this is an unsafe car. Attempting to take the driver’s road test in an unsafe car is an automatic failure of the test.” Benjy protested that the examiner had misunderstood the distinction betwe
en our safe Late Model and the Early Model indicted by Nader. But the examiner held up his hand; he had heard enough. He would brook no lawyerly quibbles and technicalities. “Show me the tires are inflated to the pressures in the owner’s manual,” he repeated.

  When I moved toward the car to retrieve our tire pressure gauge, the examiner stopped me. “Not you,” he growled, jabbing his thumb toward Benjy. “Him. The applicant.”

  As ordered, Benjy went to the glove box and retrieved the owner’s manual and our tire gauge. “It recommends fifteen pounds in the front tires and twenty-six in the rear,” he said, without even opening the manual to check. “It’s on page thirty-four.” The examiner glowered at what he perceived as snarky impudence, but Benjy never saw it. He was too busy checking the tire pressures, just as he did each time we stopped for gas.

  “Well?” said the examiner, having checked page thirty-four in the manual to confirm the recommended temperatures were just as Benjy said.

  “Nineteen in each front tire and twenty-nine in each rear tire,” Benjy reported.

  “That’s not what the manual recommends, is it?” asked the examiner, springing his trap.

  It was over. Benjy’s chance for a license today had just dropped from approximately to absolutely zero.

  “Those recommendations are for when the car has been sitting for three hours or longer and the tires are cold,” said Benjy. “The manual says that on page thirty-four. Tire pressures increase when the tires are hot. They are hot now because we drove on them and it is a hot day and they are resting on a hot surface. These tires are inflated correctly.”

  It was the right answer, and the examiner knew it. Benjy had avoided his trap.

  “Get in the car,” the examiner demanded.

  Benjy purposefully strode to the driver’s door, opened it, strapped himself in, and gave the examiner a tour of the car’s controls. He was on his own now. And, while he had escaped the examiner’s tire inflation trap, certainly there were other traps he could set that would trip Benjy up. After Benjy’s eternal, tedious Corvair encomiums, there was simply no way the examiner would let him pass the test.