The Day of Reckoning

The test site was, by custom, the same location as the taxi school the applicant had attended.

We'd been told to provide our own pencils and erasers and pencil sharpener; to be there at nine in the morning and expect long waits; and to bring along something to snack on, because once testing began we couldn't leave the general area until the whole process was concluded.

I ate a larger-than-average breakfast, and, enjoying the early heat of summer, got to LaGuardia Community College on time, joining an already-long line.  We were all checked to see whether we'd brought the correct forms and receipts, and then shunted into a side room where we were to wait.  There were a lot of us (about six dozen people took the exam at LaGuardia that day), and I was probably the only one of western European descent (as I had expected, based on the ethnic composition of the classes I'd attended).  Only one woman was taking the test, and she was clearly from the Indian subcontinent.  While waiting, most people earnestly studied their workbooks.  I alternately looked over a few notes and walked around outside the room to damp down my restlessness.

After a long while we were told to assemble outside the test room on an upper floor.  There we had another lengthy wait before being ushered into a spacious area and slowly directed, one by one, to our individual seats among the rows of desks.

There were to be two parts to the exam, the first a 30-question segment on English-language proficiency, and then, after a short break, the main 50-question test that covered geography and rules and regulations.  An applicant had to achieve a minimum score of 70 on each to get their hack license, but anyone who failed the language test would have the rest of their exam disqualified.

On that day, there were some dozen repeat attendees for the English-proficiency exam, and I didn't envy them.  As an immigrant-intensive industry, English was the native language of only a minority of New York's current generation of drivers.  I was fluent in English alone and couldn't imagine ever being able to pass a test in any other language.

Things had changed quite a bit since I took the test back in 1983.  Then, there was no English-proficiency segment and (probably because of that) you were allowed to fail the test twice (rather than just once).  Only if you flunked it three times running did you have to wait several months before you could give it another go.

And the whole test atmosphere was tighter this time around.  As part of the preliminary remarks, a security officer joined the TLC-appointed officials to say he'd personally escort out anyone suspected of cheating.  The burden of proof would be on the applicant.  This was in stark contrast to the ambience of my 1983 test site, when a single monitor casually roamed the room, and a guy sitting nearby was able to urgently whisper to me during the exam, "Which way is uptown?"

We rolled through the language test, which largely consisted of listening to audio simulations of passengers saying where they wanted to go, and then entering our multiple-choice selection on our test sheet.

After a brief break that allowed us to munch down a candy bar or half a sandwich, we were back at our desks, taking on the core test.  The first ten questions were an open-book segment on map reading, a skill that was seen as no-nonsense in light of most beginning drivers' flimsy knowledge of the complex street alignments of the city's five boroughs.

Within a few minutes, the security officer rushed to the desk in front of me, took its occupant firmly by the arm and steered him quickly from the room on suspicion of cheating.  "Please, sir, no; please, sir," the would-be cabbie pleaded, without effect.

In the last minutes of testing, a second guy was tossed out for having his street atlas on his desk at a time when it was supposed to be inaccessible.

After we put our pencils down at the test's conclusion, we were told that we'd have to wait about six days for the exam to be scored, and then we could drop by the taxi school and find out our exact results.  We couldn't phone in for the scores -- they'd only be given out in person, for "reasons of privacy and security."

I took the subway back to Manhattan and went to a neighborhood Mexican restaurant for some cheese enchiladas.  After ordering, I tried to conjure up the test questions I had doubts about, the ones whose answers I had mulled for a long time before settling on a best guess.  I pulled out my study guide and New York City street atlas.  I had guessed wrong on what Bronx street the Macombs Dam Bridge fed into (Jerome Avenue).  I didn't luck out in knowing which section of Queens a particular avenue ran through.  I had forgotten the location of a hotel and messed that one up entirely.  In fact, it seemed I'd mostly guessed poorly and I knew I had guessed a dozen or more times.

I put the books away and tried not to think about it any more.  I told myself that my guess was that I had passed the test, but was immediately taken aback by my awareness that thinking about my guessing abilities was the very thing draining me of my confidence.  There was nothing further I could do about it all at this point.  In any case, I'd have to wait some six days to know one way or the other.

By the time my meal arrived, I was no longer in the mood for eating.