Lauren’s Beans

There are a series of events that signify your introduction as a working unit of society in most cultures (don’t quote me).  In the United States there is basically one singular rite of passage. The all important Driver’s License. With the Driver’s License you go from dependent and immobile to independent and mobile all in one big defining swoop.  Later you will probably move out of your parent’s house but, the defining moment is the moment you get your driver’s license and get the keys to your first car.

I’ve passed through this rite of passage before right around my sixteenth birthday like everybody else.  In Italy though of course we didn’t have a car, we sold ours before leaving. And unfortunately for me in Italy my US driver’s license got stolen. So when I got back to the US I was in the pre-teen state of mobility… as in I couldn’t.

Last week I did it all again.  As if it were my initiation back into American culture, my welcome back rite of passage, I got a driver’s license and a car. I was dead scared of taking the driver’s test again. Not because I thought I didn’t know how to drive but, the sheer thought of failing the driver’s test at 24 and having to retake it, the sheer contemplation of that greatest of humiliations had me diligently studying the driver’s manual and panicking in the testing line like as if it was the first time again.  Waiting in the dingy 1970s wood panelling waiting room watching the paint peel off the walls.  From the other room you could hear every question answered by the people who entered the office before you.  The man before me went in to the office and my tension mounted then I heard “Sir, when did you first get your driver’s license?” “Well, ma’amm I rekon thet I’v hed an Alabama driverrs licisence all me lif.” “Sir, you have to have gotten your driver’s license after you turned 16, did you take the test maybe when you were 16 or 19 years old.” “Wellll, yeh I rekin that that is right, maybe when I ws 16 or 19.” “And what year would that be, Sir?” “MMMM, I dn’t know.”  By this time I was almost rolling and all the tension had dispersed at least from me.  In the end I didn’t have to do the test again they just looked up my valid Arkansas License and gave me an Alabama one again.

The next day we got a car.  Now we are fully car-ed and stereo-ed and license-ed and I have again entered adulthood in the United States.