I grabbed the bundle of letters in my mailbox and walked directly to the recycling can, expecting all junk. “So wasteful,” I muttered judgmentally, tossing them one by one into the blue bin.

​“You’ve been approved!” a credit card offer read. “Free gift inside!” two charity solicitations promised, one containing return address labels with my last name spelled wrong, and the other with a small notepad printed with cartoon butterflies. There were postcards from realtors, grocery store fliers and retail ads. I was about to throw the whole thing in the bin (I kept the notepad for my commissary shopping lists), when an official envelope caught my eye.

​“Rhode Island Department of Motor Vehicles,” it formally announced in the upper left corner. I tore it open, my guilty conscience predicting that past parking and speeding tickets had finally caught up with me. But, rather than a warrant for my arrest, the envelope contained a driver’s license renewal form. Relieved while simultaneously annoyed by memories of long waits at the DMV, my mind wandered to my driver’s licenses of the past.

​The first one when I was sixteen, the fake one I ordered from an ad in the back of a magazine, the many that I lost during my 20s and the ones with no photograph that I had while I was a military spouse and Pennsylvania was our home of record.

​Then I remembered the unique driver’s permit I obtained in 1996. We’d been stationed in England, where Americans couldn’t drive more than a year without a supplemental permit issued after passing the required testing. Although I’d have preferred a poke in the eye after our complicated overseas military family move with a baby and cat needing six months of quarantine, the testing is a good idea for Americans unfamiliar with driving on the left side of the road, right side steering wheels, the metric system and roundabouts.

​After learning road rules in a course given in a base classroom, my husband and I showed up for the required written exam just as test booklets were being passed out.

​Francis was seated two rows behind me, where I saw him carefully considering each of the 50 questions with a furrowed brow. I got to work, reading questions and scribbling in tiny ovals, eager to retrieve our 10-month-old son from the sitter. Deep in thought about overtaking on the right, I hadn’t noticed that my left leg was falling asleep.

​The minutes ticked by on the classroom wall clock as my brain swirled with carriageways, box junctions, give way signs and centre lines. With the final oval filled, I closed my test booklet, uncrossed my legs, and headed to the proctor’s desk at the front of the room.

​But upon taking a step, my left leg buckled. I stumbled, falling into a young Army guy seated across the aisle. “Sorry!” I whispered, grasping his seat back to steady myself.

​It was then that I realized that my leg was in a deep coma, completely numb and unresponsive. Rather than being a necessary appendage, my leg had become nothing but dead weight dangling limply from my hip.

​Other testers were finished, too, so I had to move forward somehow. Using my hands to lock my left knee backward, I balanced on my right leg, and using my torso, I swung the dead appendage forward, grabbing the shoulders of testers who looked up at me, startled and confused.

​Swing, stumble, steady, step, swing, stumble, steady, step — I knocked uncontrolled into test-takers, whispering awkward apologies as I made my way forward. Finally, I gripped the proctor’s desk and breathlessly handed her my scoresheet, which she graded while eyeing me with suspicion.

​Somehow, the proctor didn’t fail me for being drunk or disorderly, and I passed. After a period of painful tingling, my left leg awoke from her most-untimely slumber, which was a good thing, because I needed her for the clutch of our hand-me-down Renault Vesta.

​Thankfully, I won’t have to take any tests to renew my Rhode Island driver’s license, but I’ll definitely remember not to cross my legs while waiting at the DMV.

Read more at themeatandpotatoesoflife.com and in Lisa’s book, “The Meat and Potatoes of Life: My True Lit Com.” Email: meatandpotatoesoflife@gmail.com