The reason I do not have my driver's license:

Disclaimer: This is the first real post I have made entirely on my iMac. As such, the drawings will suck even more than usual while I get used to using Paintbrush.



In Pennsylvania, you have to be sixteen to get your driver's permit. I know most kids are excited for this time, because for them it means freedom. I was not excited. It wasn't even that I didn't want to be able to drive, I was mostly just apathetic about the whole idea. I had recently moved into the center of town where everything is pretty much within walking distance, so I had absolutely no reason to be excited about driving.

As it was, I finally got my permit about three or four months after my birthday. This is about how I felt about that:

After a week or so, my sister decides "Hey! Why don't we go driving? I'll take you to a parking lot and you can just take it easy and get used to it." I agree, so she drives about five blocks from my house to a school. I take the wheel and putt around the parking lot at about three or five miles an hour and I start to realize, "Hey, this is fun! I like driving!"

I practice pulling into parking spaces for a little while and then my sister says "Why don't you take the car around the block?" So I leave the safety of my parking lot and turn left on to the real road. I navigate the block successfully and by this time I'm feeling a bit smug. I can totally drive. I got this. I pull into the lot again and park in a space. "Now what?" I ask.

"I don't know."

So I drive back to the road and turn right this time. Now what I had failed to remember is that this road leads to a hill. And of course, on hills objects with wheels will pick up momentum. I was not prepared at all. The car began traveling faster and faster, so I panicked.

 

 My brain had frozen up. But I was quickly entering an intersection that looked like this:

So since I had totally forgotten that cars come equipped with mechanisms that allow them to stop, I had three choices.

1) Crash into the house on the corner, leap out of the car and start yelling "Who the hell parked in my spot?!"
2) Smash into the car parked in front of the house
3) Mow down the stop sign and pray the telephone pole will stop me.

I chose option number three.

A lady came rushing out of the house, and having just watched an idiot teenager crash his sister's Taurus into a telephone pole, she was understandably excited. "Oh my Gawd, are you guys okay?" We muttered some embarrassed response, and I was literally shaking with adrenaline and guilt. I kept apologizing to my sister, but displaying that classic elder-sibling wisdom, she simply smiled at me and said "Don't worry about it. The insurance will cover it."

And it's a damn good thing that it did, too. If you've ever examined a road sign closely, you will know that the signs are on a long piece of metal that bolts into a shorter piece of metal that actually sticks in the ground.

This piece of metal tore up the underside of my sister's vehicle, and it cost over three grand to have it all fixed.

And that is why I have not gotten my driver's license.