"High on Sovereignty"
In places with poor public transportation, cars are among the first objects through which a young adult exercises their independence. For many youths, driving the family on errands for "practice" is the first time in which their decisions have major consequences. If they make a mistake on the road, that could be lethal, and first-time drivers know this. While experienced drivers become numb to this reality until they're looking an accident square in the face, this anxiety is paralyzing to new drivers. Over time, however, the fear fades and is replaced with a feeling of independence, and those days where you are trusted with the family car or get your own vehicle become cherished moments. Regular Car Reviews describes this moment of freedom as the "high of one's own sovereignty" ("1997 Buick Park Avenue: Regular Car Reviews", 11:43-13:00).
This moment is a ritual, a rite of passage, marked by the frame of receiving first your learner's permit and then your license. Putting that crisp, plasticky-smelling card into your wallet is the frame that, as Sims and Stephens describe, inaugurates you into young adulthood (2011, 102).
I remember the first time I felt this way. It was late high school and I had some spending money from working 35-40 hours each week after school. I decided to visit a couple friends 6 hours away because one was hosting a show for his band. I made that whole trip by myself with a car I bought myself and with gas I bought myself. No one could tell me when to stop, how fast or slow to go, or what time I needed to be home. I was used to family trips being highly rigid and based on the group's collective wants. I would have to compromise about the activities I wanted to do in the interest of everyone having an overall good time. That meant watching kids for extended family, stopping every hour because someone had to use the restroom, being crammed into a too-hot van, and other such annoyances. But, as a young adult with his own vehicle, I was free from all that. Not that I was free from consequence, but those consequences would always be the result of my choice. So I would drive to Seattle as if my license would turn into a pumpkin at midnight; I would waste money on crappy gas station food because I didn't want to pack a lunch; and I ensured that I drove at night where the heat of the day could not find me and I could be mesmerized by the glittering lights of the city.
Gaining your license is, in my mind, a quintessential rite of passage for American youth. It is a declaration that you are responsible enough to operate a potentially-lethal machine and it is the recognition that you now have both independence and control over your own destiny. As a kid, you do not have freedoms. You go to school, you listen to parents, you go to after-school activities--all these are places where your will is blunted or outright ignored. You effectively have no rights; you only have advocates for "what is in your best interest." But the first time you can own a car and are accepted as not a kid, but a young adult--that is the first taste of freedom most youths get. Some of my best memories of being a teenager consist entirely of getting into a car with friends and driving laps around the 14 total miles of paved road in Sitka or cruising the cherry orchards in Oregon late at night, finally, for the first time in my life, high on my own sovereignty.