In September of my senior year, only a few months before I turned seventeen, I got my first car. Bullet was a sleek, gray Kia Sportage, with a cone nose that evoked gun imagery and got her stuck with her name by the end of the first week I had her. Bullet revved loudly when I stepped on the gas as red lights turned to green, and she had speed. When she shot off, it was haphazard, sure, but she was shooting. She was explosive potential in its purest, most unadulterated form.
Technically, Bullet was my mom’s. My mom was the one who mandated that I get a small SUV instead of the no-fuss Sedan or quirky Punchbug I wanted. She didn’t fail to remind me that when I left for college, she’d be the one driving “my” car. But, Bullet was, from the get-go, mine. I drove her to and from school every day, I littered her seats with half-completed homework handouts and empty Tim Hortons cups, and I preset the radio stations that I blasted far above the volume my mom would’ve wanted. My mom had gotten Bullet because she was the “reasonable” car: pragmatically safe and economically sensical. But Bullet had a spark of subversion and sass that my mom hadn’t seen, and that spark matched mine—and so, Bullet was mine.
I think of Bullet as the beep-twice car. I had idolized driving for most of high school because it represented independence and maturity, and as the child of a helicopter mother and the youngest member of my class, those were the two things I wanted most. So, when I got Bullet, I became fiercely protective of her. I parked her in the same spot in my school’s lot each morning, next to a curb so she’d have fewer neighbors. I walked around her entire exterior before leaving, ensuring no one had scarred her sharp doors. Each time I left her, I triple-checked that I locked her doors; she’d beep from across the parking lot that she was indeed locked, then beep again when I clicked my keys just once more, just to really be sure. Bullet afforded me the chance for real, reckless teenagedom, and I ironically treated her with careful oversight to preserve that recklessness.
In New York, if you’re seventeen and haven’t taken state-sanctioned driver’s ed, your driving curfew is 9 p.m. sharp. Bullet let me be free, but not that free. Both my parents worked in government and encouraged rigid respect of the laws, even when they didn’t necessarily match practical or moral concerns, and so I had to come home by 9; no ifs, ands, or buts. Bullet had an early bedtime.
Of course, I pushed it. Bullet reached her highest glory on Friday and Saturday nights, 8:45 p.m., racing down Transit to make it home. I made a habit of visiting my significant other’s house in local Orchard Park, forty minutes from my house and leaving as close to 9 as I feasibly could. Could I squeeze that drive into 25 minutes? Legally, no. But I happen to not share the same blind respect for laws that my parents do, and Bullet sped past the 45 mph speed limit signs at a cool 58, and I slid in the door at 9:04 p.m. to a mildly disapproving look from my mom. On these drives, I turned Bullet’s stereo as high as it would go, shouting the words to Eden songs; I opened the moonroof and stuck a hand high into the sky. Other drivers probably hated me. Some days, I might’ve hated me, too. Not all the drives were happy. I cried in Bullet, ranted to the empty air, screamed in frustration and anger, and became shellshocked in moments of deep existential uncertainty. I didn’t love Bullet because she was a haven safe from all the problems I had outside of her doors. I loved her because she was real, an embodiment of how I felt and acted and saw myself. She was potentiality. She was the getting from one place to another in a messy, loud way, and she never failed me.
I fear turning 20 more than I fear turning 40 or 50. Still a teenager, I have time, so much time that it pools around and above me. I still have the entire world available. I can still become a poet, a publisher, a politician, a professor, a parent, and a person—a real, full-fledged, fully-actualized and satisfied person. I can still dream of filibustering on the Senate floor, writing a bestselling memoir, traveling the world, and filling every day with meaningful life, so much life. The end of teenagedom signifies to me a narrowing of options. Suddenly, the path lies behind and not ahead of me, and changing or widening the path becomes much harder. Seventeen meant wishing for everything I could do to become everything I did: a real, concrete manifestation of the path. But, it also meant secretly wishing for the path to never truly manifest, living forever in this land of open options.
I turned no longer 17 over Thanksgiving break—on Thanksgiving itself, to be exact—and I feel as if I should be grateful. 18 means finally voting, signing my own healthcare forms, getting a tattoo, buying scratch-offs, renting hotel rooms, and having small freedoms that I at 17 didn’t have. But it feels like a loss, another year gone rather than another year gained.
I don’t have a driving curfew anymore. Bullet finally had her shining moment: sliding through the 10 p.m. darkness with my now legally full, not junior, license in the center hutch. I didn’t have to speed home this time, and so I didn’t. Bullet went a moderate, responsible 47 mph the entire way down Transit. The moonroof stayed closed. When I think of myself, I think of endless passion, energy, compassion, and voice. I don’t want to mellow. I want a life built on this vibrant uncertainty. But on this drive, Bullet and I were quiet.
Image Credit: Feature, Writer’s Own,1