Failure

Currently Listening To: Let's Make Love and Listen to Death from Above by CSS
I remember writing, back in my freshman year, an essay for English about "rites of passage". One of the examples I used for modern rites of passage was getting a driver's license, and I don't think anyone would contest that.

So when someone fails at a rite of passage, like the one above, the only thing that comes to mind is "soul-crushing". I think that works. That's pretty much how I feel right now. This is like that time I found some receipts a few days after Christmas one year... receipts for things labeled "from Santa". That's really all I can compare this to in terms of disappointment. So much self-consoling and whatnot. Denial... Lots of denial. "You were nervous", "the instructor was too harsh", whatever.

On the other hand, "embarrassing" also comes to mind. I haven't been faced with too many embarrassing situations in the past, so if I had to equate the shame felt as that woman told my dad that I'd failed to anything, I'd say: riding a bike on a crowded street, crashing the bike and landing in such a way that the handlebar goes straight up my ass, at which point a clown approaches me and takes a lengthy hangover piss all over me; while still covered in piss-stained clothing with a bike hanging out my ass, I'm arrested for indecent exposure (my ass is showing, I suppose) and hauled off to jail without a chance to change clothes or remove the bicycle from my ass.

I think that sums up how I felt.

So yeah, I failed my driver's test. I could get 100% on my retest and still couldn't undo this. I'll think of it every time I see my license, every time I renew it, every time I drive, when my children are getting their licenses (parents who've smoked pot think they feel bad telling their children about the evils of drugs? try giving your kid tips on passing the test when you yourself failed).

I mean, is there anything that could possibly signify my non-worth of existence?

No.

At the age of sixteen, I have already faced the most crushing defeat I could ever imagine.

Excuse me while I go dig a sixty seven inch deep hole in the backyard, fill it with lye, surround said hole with all manner of flesh-eating critters and then do a nice big cannonball into my rightfully deserved peril.

There are starving children in Ethiopia who would gladly pass a driver's test, but ungrateful and selfish me had to go and squander it.