Mommy’s Piggy Tales – 10th Grade

I’m participating in a project called Mommy’s Piggy Tales where I’ll be writing stories about my childhood once a week for 15 weeks, starting with birth and ending with graduation in the hopes that my children, and possibly my children’s children, will one day appreciate it.

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In 10th grade I got my driver’s license and my first boyfriend!

I took the driver’s test very soon after my 16th birthday.  I had learned to drive a stick shift, but for some reason, I didn’t feel comfortable taking the test in that car so, instead, I took it in our van.  I’m not talking about a minivan here – I mean one of those huge vans that’s been converted into a passenger car.  Compared to the car I had been learning on, that thing was BIG!  Which turned out to be a bit of a problem during the parallel parking portion of the test.  At one point, as I was trying to park between two cars, the tester let out a little gasp as if I were about to hit one of the cars.  When I stopped, she said, “Let’s just move on to the next thing…”  (ooops).  So, I didn’t so much pass the parallel parking portion of the test, but I flew through the other parts and I had a license!  Watch out world!

I also had a car! A fire engine red, 1982 RX-7!  The very same car I had played the flute in back in 5th grade.  My mom had moved on to a newer car, so I bought (sort of) this one from her.  I always said it could only go down from there when your first car is a little red sports car.

At almost exactly the same time, my step sister was being introduced to some guy who lived about 15 minutes away and worked at a great pizza shop (I think we called him something like “pizza boy” – how original).  Since I had my license (and she didn’t), she talked me into driving her over to the pizza place when he was working (I’m sure it didn’t take too much convincing, since I was dying to take my new license out for a spin!).

I drove her over a few days in a row.  We’d go hang out while he worked and flirt with him when he wasn’t busy.  After a few days of that, my mom told me to stop – she didn’t feel comfortable with me driving so much so near dark so soon after I’d gotten my license. 

My sister and the boy hung out once outside of his work where she met some of his friends.  Turns out she was more interested in one of the friends and he was interested in me!  We started talking on the phone, which was very exciting for me!  A boy actually liked me!

We eventually did start truly dating and I dated him all through the rest of high school (with one short break) and my first year of college.  We dated so long, we would actually talk about getting married and what we’d name our kids.  I think, though, I always knew we weren’t the right match, but we grew up a lot together and he was such an important part of my life and, for that, I thank him.