Drive My Car

Well, I finally got my license. This time, when I pulled into a parking space after my test, the examiner said, "Okay, you can go in and get your license," instead of, "You'll have to come back and retake the test." My picture looks okay, considering that everyone always says how bad driver's license photos turn out, but the signature is bad; you have to sign your name on a little screen with a kind of stylus, and so "Colleen" goes all over the place, with "Powers" squeezed in at the end.

I've kind of been thinking a lot lately about maturity and rites of passage, stuff like that. The other day when driving by myself to Chipotle to meet some friends, I thought, "This is what it means to grow up." Okay, so maybe that's a bit melodramatic, but getting my license is the first step in a succession of these events: being a senior in high school, applying to and then enrolling in college, going to prom, graduating, leaving home. I'm excited about college, but being a teenager is pretty easy, at least in my family. No taxes or anything to worry about, no kids to look after, everything handled for you by your parents. Having a car is the first step away from that; it means paying for gas and making sure everything's in working order and having insurance. On top of the license, I also am starting to babysit the neighbor's kids, a three-year-old boy and a girl who's less than a year old. It's a lot of responsibility all at once.

I'm starting a class at Rock Valley College this week: Introduction to Fiction. We're reading The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime and The God of Small Things. I haven't read either, although I have looked at the first one in the bookstore; it's about an autistic kid trying to solve a mystery, apparently. The other one is set in India; that's all I remember from reading the jacket. The class is three weeks long, four days a week, four hours a day, so it's pretty intensive. I did government like that last year and it was okay; I liked my professor. This one's just for fun (no dual credit, since I'm already taking a literature-type class at Auburn), but I still want to do well.

The class comes at a welcome time; with my mom at work, my sister and I have been doing a lot of lying around, reading, and watching movies. (I saw Annie Hall the other day, my first introduction to Woody Allen, and I foresee a new temporary obsession.) I'm just about getting to the point where I'm ready to go back to school, even though I keep telling myself that it's quickly going to become monotonous and dreary. The other part of me hopes this year will be different, though; I only have one class that will almost definitely be hard and boring (physics). I think this RVC class will stave off my longings for school a while longer, though, and make me really enjoy the last few weeks of August.