Eighteen. That’s how old I was when I got my license. Unlike most kids my age, learning to drive just wasn’t up there on my priority list, which is amazing to me now because I LOVE to drive, for the most part. (When we exclude eleven hour car trips and daily commutes, and even the commutes weren’t so bad.) It was also amazing because I worked in high school. I got my first job as a sophomore, when I was maybe fifteen. I worked in the Men’s Department at Sears and thought I was the shit because I had to dress up and at that age, I hadn’t yet learned that wearing heels was not a good idea for a job you had to stand on your feet for hours on end.
But I worked in the mall from fifteen up until long after I got a license and a car. And you’d think being forced to take the bus would spur my interests in obtaining my license and essentially, my freedom. I can’t tell you why except it just was something that never felt like it needed to be a top priority. Between a very busy and heavy AP/Honors workload at school and my job, I didn’t feel like making time, maybe. My parents had also explained that I would need to pay my own way and get my own car as well as have limited access to their vehicles and since I knew I wasn’t going to be able to do either on my paltry part-time retail wages, I just didn’t even bother.
The first time I drove by myself was to my high school graduation, in my parents red Grand Prix.
A week after I started driving, I got my first ticket: for turning left on a red light. Because I wasn’t paying attention or some synapses weren’t firing correctly in my brain. I thought it was a stop sign so I treated it like on. Stopped, look both ways and went. With a cop RIGHT BEHIND ME!