This time, I thought, I won’t get caught short. This time, I’ll plan for every failure, prevent every lapse.
I forgot the universe is the school mean girl, savaging your every success.
I took Willie and Indy for a driving evaluation. This is long overdue. I have refused to be in a car driven by either one of them since we lived in a world without Game of Thrones.
The last time I drove with Willie was out of pure necessity. I’d been rendered unable to drive by propofol. The hospital believed I was safer letting Willie drive.
The hospital was brutally, hilariously wrong.
We tooled along at about four miles per hour in the left lane of the Schuylkill expressway. I heard Willie mutter, “I haven’t been able to see A THING since my eye surgery.”
I went to sleep. If I was going to die that day, I didn’t want to see it coming.
The last time I drove with Willie before that was en route to North Carolina. We’ll skip the part where Indy, the navigator, fell asleep and Willie, the driver, firmly believed that following Indy’s back road north would take her to North Carolina. From Pennsylvania.
As I sat in the center of the minivan, passing juice and chips and coloring books to many children, I looked up just in time to see Willie run a red light. My mouth worked ahead of my brain, shouting to Willie about the unheeded traffic signal.
“Where?” Willie asked, turning around in the front seat to look behind her for far more minutes than one should ever have their eyes off the road. I silently berated myself for speaking up. I knew she’d turn around to look for the light.
So I don’t drive with Willie anymore.
Indy, on the other hand, not only drove for a living but is basically perfect. I have no horror stories about Indy.
But…..Willie and Indy are both getting on in years. And as a control freak, I think it would be wonderful to dictate Indy and Willie’s comings and goings. Confiscating their car keys would be a splendid means to that end.
I scheduled a driving test. Indy and Willie would not be driving. Rather, they’d go through a series of assessments to determine their fitness to drive. Don suggested I bribe the therapists fifty bucks each to fail Indy and Willie.
I should have listened.
As one therapist got Indy and Willie settled, the other therapist pulled me aside. She asked what had led me to get my parents’ driving skills evaluated.
I thought a moment. “I want to control every aspect of their lives,” doesn’t sit well with the non-control freak crowd. “I’m tired of them making doctor’s appointments without telling me because I like to run interference,” didn’t sound any better.
Instead, I reached into my nurse practitioner vocabulary word bank. I threw out a few solid, fifty-centers. Voila. Driving test, engaged.
Sixty minutes later, we were told to keep Indy off the road, but that Willie had passed the exam like an Exeter junior passes the SAT. As long as Willie doesn’t drive at night – check – or on highways – oh God, check – then Willie was good to take the wheel.
Willie beamed, because Willie is happiest when I’m wrong and she’s right. All the more so because it never happens.
The therapists made one more recommendation. Indy should take a more involved, two-hour test in which a car is actually driven. It wasn’t necessary for Willie, but since Indy had to go, they suggested Willie do so as well.
Don’t worry. I already hit the ATM for the fifty-dollar bribe. I won’t let that opportunity pass me by again.
As we drove home, Indy sat quietly in the back. More quiet than usual. This, I knew, was a harsh blow. I am killing him with tiny doses of poison, first taking his home, then making him get diagnosed. He’d lost his garden, his church, his basement. Now I’d managed to take away his freedom, too.
Willie chatted about this and that in the front seat, pointing out the back road leading to my sister’s house (it wasn’t) as Indy occasionally directed me to turn left here, go straight there, if you cut down this street you’ll shave ten minutes from our commute.
The following day, I contacted Moss Rehab, bent on making that second driving evaluation appointment. Not only did I need a referral, I needed a specific referral from the Moss website. The referral needed to be signed by Willie and Indy’s primary care physician.
For once, the universe saw the good in the deed I was doing. Or wanted me to hope I would soon control Willie and Indy’s every move. Either way, Willie and Indy had an appointment with their doctor scheduled for that coming Monday.
Amazed at my serendipity, I downloaded the forms. Because I am Obsessive and controlling, I filled out the forms, only leaving blank the spot where their doctor should sign. I sealed the referrals in a manila envelope. Then I brought them to Willie and Indy.
I tucked the envelope into Willie’s purse, deep so it would neither fall out nor be seen and removed by Willie. I told Willie twice about the referrals wedged against her wallet. We chatted a bit. As I headed out, I told Willie to remember I’d put the referrals in her pocketbook.
“What referrals?” Willie asked.
So Monday morning, I texted their doctor. Later, Willie would tell me the doctor asked her for the referrals as soon as she was in the exam room.
“What referrals?” she’d asked.
I called Moss again. Simply possessing the referrals wasn’t enough. I needed to email or fax them to make an appointment. So I called Willie.
“What referrals?” Willie asked. Clearly this is her new mantra.
I’m sure you know what happened next. The referrals had been lost, misplaced somewhere between the doctor’s hands and mine. Willie, Indy, and I scoured their apartment like rats attacking a restaurant Dumpster. I checked Willie’s purse. Bizarrely, it’s very well organized. Even still, I checked it a second time, then a third.
The best she could figure, Willie left the referrals on the checkout desk at the doctor’s office. Which is obviously where my well-laid plan had gone wrong. It wasn’t enough to print the referrals, fill out the referrals, give the referrals to Indy and Willie, and text their doctor.
I should have gone to the doctor with them. I should have treated those referrals like an evidence bag on Law & Order. I never should have let them out of my sight. I was in my cutest outfit, strutting before my crush, and the universe was Regina George, knocking my books from my hands.
Was I surprised by any of this? Of course not. It’s why my bar is stacked with wine and my freezer is loaded with lava cakes. For what it’s worth, Willie wasn’t surprised either. It’s not that Willie is forgetful, or doesn’t care.
Willie is busy. She’s planning afternoon teas with her granddaughters. She’s making dinners for the handicapped lady downstairs from her. She’s worrying that I do too much. She’s trying to renew her nursing license so she can contact-trace.
She’s busy.
A few weeks ago, Willie told me her computer monitor wouldn’t turn on. She’d checked everything, to no avail. She was going to take the computer to Staples, which she does about once a week. I’m convinced the Staples employees have her picture behind the desk.
I’m pretty sure they just plug in the computer, say “beep boop bop beep”, tell her it’s fixed, and charge her $25. There’s just no way any computer fails that often.
I persuaded Willie to let me look at the monitor first. In about 0.00027 seconds I was able to deduce the monitor was not plugged in.
It was the loose cord flopping around behind the monitor that gave it away.
Willie sputtered. It was impossible, she told me. She’d checked the cord! It was the first thing she checked! And she’d checked it several –
“Go ahead,” she said, stopping mid-rant. “Take a picture. You know, we see you post all of these pictures of us, but we never see you take them.”
Just like they never saw the referrals.
