Driven Test and Wifely Panic

Okay, all of you out there who were worried, I’m back in Las Lajas enjoying the absolute best waves of the year so far. I know, no one was worried. My Favorite Panamanian and I return triumphant though as we finally obtained our Panamanian driver’s licenses. That journey started with a conversation with a Panamanian policeman at a traffic stop a couple years ago. I may have fractured the truly bizarre Panamanian speed limits on the InterAmerican Highway that led to our interaction. In the course of our discussion the policeman pointed out that since I had obtained permanent residence status, I was required to have a Panamanian driver’s license, if I was in country longer than 90 days.

Licensed

Last year I looked into the process and learned that a thirty-day driver’s school was required and was damned if I was going to spend a third of my stay in Panama learning how to drive. I based this on the observation that whatever they were teaching in Panamanian driving schools wasn’t very effective when it came to safe operation of a motor vehicle. After my Favorite Panamanian’s interaction with law enforcement earlier this year we (okay, she) decided it was time to investigate getting licenses. An explanation of the effectiveness of the schools became evident when we learned it was not really required to attend classes. We paid our money and thirty days later picked up our certificates – proud graduates without ever attending a class.

Federal Mall - Driving Test on Bottom Right

What we did receive was a computer program that allowed us to take the driver’s test. The test included 133 questions, only ten of which would be on the actual test. We “graduated” from driving school while our granddaughters were visiting so there was no thought of trying to go through the licensing process during that time. Once we felt sufficiently recovered from granddaughter interaction and began studying again, we decided this past Wednesday would be the day. We got a late start thanks to the inevitable difficulty of leaving Las Lajas. We learned the RMV office had moved to the Federal Mall which is where we go to see movies.

Picking Papayas from my Mother in Law's Side Yard

We pulled in and learned the line posted outside an entrance was for the RMV. We were told that we didn’t need an appointment because we were seniors and Panama, if nothing else, reveres its senior citizens. We had also been told that we both would not be able to take the driving test on the same day. Once we had been in the line for a few minutes an RMV lady came out an took us under her wing. She asked who was going first and when I volunteered, she accused me of a lack of gallantry until my Favorite Panamanian said that I was simply following her orders. I was sent down to the other end of the mall and told to look for a guy wearing the same kind of shirt she was wearing while she took my wife inside to insure she didn’t sneak down and watch the test.

Sunset Last Night

I eventually found the guy sitting in a truck surrounded by traffic cones. I was concerned about the test because it involved parallel parking and despite golden intentions, I hadn’t practiced that in years. He was a nice guy and pointed out three spots where I had to show I could park going forward, in reverse, and the dreaded parallel without touching any of the cones forming the parking spots. He said I had nine minutes and sent me off. After knocking off the easiest, forward parking, I headed to the parallel. That went well until I saw the guy walking over to wave me down. He said I had approached from the wrong direction. So I came around and parked beautifully again in the same spot only to have the guy come over again and point out to the outwardly very dense gringo that I had been parking in the space between the two parallel parking test spots. More embarrassed by my idiocy than nervous, I quickly knocked out both the parallel and the reverse (love the backup camera).

He handed me the sheet indicating I had passed and I returned to wait in the same line outside the mall again. A lady came out to grab the sheet and told me to wait. While I was gone, my wife, as she is wont to do, had become close friends with the RMV lady. She grabbed the keys and said she was on her way to take the driving test with no day long wait required. After about twenty minutes I was escorted into the mall where I waited in a row of chairs outside the RMV office. Eventually I made it into the office and another row of seats. I was in short order joined by my Favorite Panamanian after she successfully negotiated the course.

The office was staffed by a crew of twenty-something youngsters and we were sort of adopted by them over the next hour. I was called up for my interview where they tested my hearing and I took a very weird eye test. I was semi-impressed with myself getting through the interview completely in Spanish. I’m a little nervous about my linguistic abilities outside of my wife’s family. My wife was undergoing her interview at the next-door table. The next step was the feared written test. It was on the computer and the cute young lady said I could take it English. I surprised her and my wife by saying I would take it in Spanish. All the studying I had done was in Spanish and you never know what a translation would produce. I became a minute long hero for the RMV crew when I finished the test in less than two minutes with a perfect score (I’ve always tested well). The questions were exactly the same ones I had been studying. I looked at the answers first and then confirmed it was the same question. It was too easy. I thought I was all set and my wife shortly finished her test with another perfect score. She had been stressing seriously because she struggles with tests, reading too much into the questions.

Jupiter and Venus Getting Ever Closer to Alignment

We thought all we had to do was receive our licenses when they asked us if we had paid the fee. I asked where we pay and was told everything had to be done online. Yikes. We had our Panamanian bank app on my wife’s phone but needed a Wi-Fi signal. We went outside into the mall and once again my wife’s contagious friendliness prevailed. A guy at one of the mall booths gave us his Wi-Fi password. Somehow, I remembered both the sign in and password to our bank account and the great young people in the RMV office showed me how to process the payments. I had never done this before with the app. We were in short order rewarded with our licenses and we both admitted a fairly, almost unrealized, weight had been lifted for us. It is never fun to have this kind of requirement hanging over your head.

Beach This Morning

We celebrated with a dinner of chicken wings and beer. Okay, the beer was mostly me. Yesterday was a half day in David where we knocked off a bunch of errands, including the customary grocery run. We also ordered a new set of living room blinds and got our tickets for the return home in April. We took advantage of the aforementioned Panamanian reverence for seniors by getting a serious senior discount on the tickets. After lunch with my mother-in-law, we hit the road back to Las Lajas. As mentioned above, the waves were simply awesome for boogie boarding, although in a first, there was a series of holes in the ocean floor. Apparently, this is fairly common as the wave action carves out these ankle breaking depressions which are invisible under the foam from the surf. I know, I have such immense problems in my world.

Our Unwanted Visitor

During our absence from the condo, the landscaping contractors were in and rousted a medium sized boa constrictor from the bushes near the pool. This sent my Favorite Panamanian into a panic as she hates snakes in all forms, even pictures of them. This may stem, in small part, to having a deadly bushmaster crawl out from under our dryer while I was deployed and she was a couple weeks past delivering our daughter via c-section forty years ago. That didn’t prevent her from jumping onto the kitchen table at that time. The condo association text lines were buzzing with the news of the boa because so many young children and small (noisy) dogs visit. The caretaker had killed a venomous snake inside the bottom floor of the condo a couple weeks ago. My wife suggested reaching out to the owner of the adjacent property which had been left to go back to nature and probably was where the snakes were coming from. It turned out one of the other condo owners on the text is that property owner and for the last two days a couple of guys were out there chopping away with machetes. The boa was safely transported down the beach because I know someone out there (not my wife) was worried.

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RECURRING CHARACTERS:                                     

ABFA – Amazing Best Family Athlete - my daughter in law; BR3 – Blog Reader #3 – granddaughter #3; BRS - Blog Reader the Sequel - second granddaughter; Cantankerous Friend – friend since grade school who likes to argue about everything, poses as radical leftist to attract women; CRC - Connecticut Riverboat Captain – another close friend from high school, renowned sailor of the big river; Curbside Girls – close friends of my daughter acquired during him her single days in Brooklyn; Deckzilla – our backyard deck which grew to monstrous dimensions once my wife got involved in planning; Favorite Panamanian - the wife (of course); FBR - First Blog Reader - first granddaughter; First Friday – celebrations to mark the First Friday of the Week; Great Aunt - my elder sister; Keene Friends 1 & 2 – friends since high school from my home town of Keene, NH; Kindergarten Friend – friend since kindergarten whom I reunited with after many years; Maine and Virginia Musqueteras – two close friends of my wife – her US sisters, my wife is the 3^rd Musquetera (musketeer); Namesake Nephew – son of Great Aunt and Soxfather named after me; Neighborhood Mafioso - wife's close friend and Panamanian mafia member; PanaGals – female relatives /friends of my wife from Panama; Panamanian/Latin Mafia – inevitable group of Latino friends my wife accumulates wherever we have lived & their spouses; PCR - Pittsburgh College Roommate– high school friend, also a “Minor Celebrity” in Pittsburgh; PCR+1 - Pittsburgh College Roommate’s wife; Riggins - also known as the Grandpuppy, son's dog; Soxfather - my brother in law; Tia Loca – wife’s younger sister; Wingman – my son in law; Wingmom – Wingman’s mom, of course