"My Mother Never..."

My mother never allowed me to drive with someone who was under the age of 18 while I was a minor. And while I didn't understand it at the time, I believe now that this rule stemmed from her profession. She is a deputy sherif for the city of San Francisco and I know she only had my best interest and safety in mind. But as you could imagine, this still made high school feel extremely difficult for me. I felt left out when it seemed like all of my friends were going out and driving with their parents because they just got their permits; I was just in the passenger seat of our truck being driven by my mom. Or when my friends had their restrictions removed after an entire year of driving and would drive everyone around just because they could; I didn't get to celebrate along side with them. Instead, I was that one kid growing up who always had to get a ride somewhere from her parents, which was embarrassing enough in itself. However, if that isn't convincing enough, my mom has been, and probably will always be, notoriously late. So not only was I that one kid to show up with her mom yelling "bye, sweetie" out of the window, it was always later than everyone else; giving everyone the chance to witness my face blush a deeper than any shade of cherry.

Now if you're still not convinced about the embarrassment I had to endure from this seemingly simple rule she had, on top of all that, I rode the bus to school until my junior year in high school. Because according to another one of my mom's little rules: in order to be able to obtain my own license and drive myself, I had to have grades of B's or better. Well needless to say, I got a few C's throughout my high school career which prevented me from driving until I was 18. Because of these two innocent and simple rules, those four years of my life were always carefully planned and a synchronized schedule of events. With the whose driving where and when, the freedom one experiences from driving, felt more like restriction.

Now this all changed when I met my current boyfriend of three and a half years during my sophomore, his junior year summer, all because he could drive at age sixteen. Before I knew it, I was riding around in his charcoal grey, hand-me-down, '96, lifted, Dodge Ram. Of course with my mom being in law inforcement, it wasn't a secret for too long. She saw right through any tales I would attempt to feed her. Eventually my mom found out, everything: the fact that we were dating and the fact that he would drive me around and that he was a minor. But surprisingly, she didn't mind. To this day, I'm not too sure if she could tell that we were in it for the long run or maybe somehow knew that she wouldn't be able to stop me, or what the reason was, she didn't try to stop me. Although he has long since sold that truck and bought a new one; every once and a while when I see a spitting image of that truck driving down the road with a couple of teenagers in it, I can't help but think about how my mom's rule bent and wonder that if it hadn't, whether or not we'd still be together.