Riding in cars with boys

When you’re nineteen-going-on-twenty, you’re allowed certain freedoms that at 16 would have sounded as possible as a road trip to Pluto. In other words, legally, you can drink, drive and be merry.

It usually starts with a long-anticipated gimmick in a bar (where you ask permission a full week-and-a-half before) with people you’ve known forever. Curfew is at midnight (1 a.m. if you’ve been very, very good) and the parental units wait up to make sure you’re tucked safely into bed.

It eventually evolves into a situation where it is assumed you’re going out because it’s Friday night. You’ll be asked where you’re going and with whom, but when your ride honks the horn, they don’t go out to check. You kiss the parents goodbye, run out to meet your friends, and go off to a bar or a party where you have a few drinks, flirt with a few people, and laugh hysterically over your pal Joel’s repertoire of bear jokes. ("Anong bear ang taga-La Salle?" Answer: "Bearde!"). At around 3 a.m. you’ll be standing in front of your gate fishing out your own set of keys. You pop into your parents’ room (if they’re still up) and plop into bed.

And you think, yep, I’m all grown up.

If you’re nineteen-going-on-twenty, in all probability, you’ve also gone the whole route of student license, driving school/dad-on-the-driver’s-seat/best-friend-reluctantly-handing-you-keys all the way up to driving yourself to school and pinch-hitting when nobody’s around to pick up the groceries. Once in a while you’re hit with a parking violation, or a speeding ticket, or end up in the middle of nowhere with an overheated engine.

But you get away with it, and you think, yep, I’m all grown up.

When you’re a typical girl, nineteen-going-on-twenty, unlike this writer, you do not believe that the E on the gas gauge means "Enough." Neither do you watch anxiously when the gas needle of the car you’re hitching with is near F and may leave you with a "Finished" gas tank.

When you’re a typical girl, nineteen-going-on-twenty, unlike this writer, you do not sit on the back of a cab and nearly crash into a dead end because your definition of left is a little different from the definition of the rest of the world.

When you’re a typical girl, nineteen-going-on-twenty, unlike this writer, and your pal Alvin offers to teach you the basics of driving, when he tells you to go left, you do not let go of the wheel in the heat of the moment and scream at it, "Where’s left?" (Forcing the same pal to grab for the emergency brake).

When you’re a typical girl, nineteen-going-on-twenty, when you bribe your current best buddy Jay with free lunch in exchange for a driving lesson, it is not supposed to mean a day at the repair shop. The fact that you’re cruising along on first gear (in an empty parking lot) should mean that you’re perfectly safe. Unlike this writer, you do not get rear-ended by a van. You do not jump off the car you’re driving, apologize profusely to the guy who just hit you, and let him drive off into the great beyond without checking if your car is okay. And yes, you do not stare at the three different places the mudguard is broken in the hopes that it will magically repair itself. Neither do you insist on even attempting to explain that you crashed the car while you were parked.

When you’re a nineteen-year-old-girl-going-on-twenty, there are certain freedoms that you’re allowed.

When this writer turns twenty, it is in the hope that the use of those freedoms don’t drive everyone else mad.

* * *

Send comments to pat.evangelista@gmail.com.