When I was 16, I was driving a car that I should not have been driving anywhere aside from small, backcountry farm roads. The hubcaps were rusting and if you pressed on the brakes while it was raining they would creak so loud, it would startle the driver in front of you. It was the kind of car that if you were driving behind it, you would switch to the furthest lane as a safety precaution.
I however, as a 16-year-old high school student, making $11.70/hour, had to make do with my rusting, creaking, barely-staying-together car. For the years that I did drive it, I hated it. I hated having to come to a full stop before slowly inching over every speed bump. I hated having to explain to my friends what the small rectangular slot beneath the AC was (it was a cassette player). Yet when I think of that car now, I can only look back in fondness. Sometimes, I feel myself missing the unpredictable and messy nature of it. Unfortunately, like most things, it is something you cannot appreciate until it’s gone.
For what battering and beating the car did take, it sure was resilient. When I was 16, I reversed directly into a light post, leaving a sizable scratch just above the left brake light. Naturally, I blamed the scratch on some external, paranormal force. Years later, I admitted to the fault and, needless to say, my parents were unsurprised – perhaps due to their own experience in adolescent misfortune.
When I failed my (third) calculus test, I sat in the school parking lot, pounding at the steering wheel, wondering how my life would amount to anything if I couldn’t solve for f(x).
When I got accepted into university, I went to McDonald’s to celebrate with my friends and ended up spilling Diet Coke all over the carpet in a failed attempt to make a toast while driving.
By the end of high school, there were coffee stains on the ceiling, rips in the leather, buttons missing from the stereo – but it was still going. The car had seen its fair share of potholes and speed bumps, meltdowns and breakups, but it had also seen the good things. That car was there when I drove to prom in five-inch heels and it was there when I kissed my parents goodbye every morning before school. Despite its waning condition, it brought me to and from all the uncertainties of youth.
Alas, after years of driving around in my barely-staying-together car, time rightfully decided that the era of my rusting hunk of metal on wheels had come to an end. I no longer have a car and I don’t feel that I need it. If I need to get somewhere, I can walk. Sometimes it takes a lot of effort, but I always get there. When I was 16, I needed that car. Looking back, I adore that car. I hated it then, yet now, I know it was a necessary progression. It is vital to learn how to navigate through something that veers precariously on the edge of collapse, in order to learn how to walk on a flat surface with surety.
In an ideal world, we’d all get brand new BMW’s on our 16th birthday – I didn’t. I drove a car that had more flaws than features but I like to think that’s one of the most distinctive aspects that makes being 16 such a formative time. Whether or not you want to, you endure that battered car and the constant unsureness that comes along with it. You come out on the other side, perhaps a little bit more weathered and slightly more cynical but undoubtedly more adept and experienced. I can drive a rusting, creaking, barely-staying-together car just as well as I can walk on my own two feet.
At any given time, there is a multitude of other 16-year-olds reversing into light posts and lying to their parents to cover it up. They too will learn that even after you hit every light post and drive over every curb, there is one guarantee; you will always continue driving.