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When I was sixteen and licensed up, I was gone. Literally—every opportunity I had, dust trails out of my parent’s driveway. No more hanging around the T.V. room, the living room, or even the groovy wicker-chaired sitting area of my bedroom, where I’d hang for hours, staring into my Lava Lamp, burning incense and listening to The Pink Floyd (I apparently didn’t realize that grabbing my parent’s retro Sixties stuff from the attic would result in me living in some weird alternate version of the Sixties, even though clearly, it was the Seventies. Thus it went with me...). My new found mobility had its price, however, for I had to take a job washing dishes to help cover the spike in my parent’s insurance premium—their penalty for being saddled with a sixteen year old male—but a small price when compared with my new-found ability to traverse the boundaries of our then-rural patch of Northwestern Connecticut in the family Volvo station wagon, sometimes packed with as many teen-aged bodies as we could carry, or sometimes just a few bodies, packed with as many illegal substances as we could carry.

It’s no wonder I’m scared to death now that my step son Josh has reached driving age, what, with my sordid teen years and all—at least what I can remember of them. And based on what I can remember, it’s all terrifying.

Of course we did not have as many new licensee restrictions back in the day, not even a seat-belt law in 1980 when I got mine (learned the hard way about that one...), and definitely no time limits or rules concerning who you could drive with and when; the open road was yours right after they snapped a shot of your mug at the Department of Motor Vehicles. Provided you had a car of some sort. And permission from your folks. Yet after seeing how quickly I could destroy the family wagon within a year of getting my license, my mother was co-signing a $500 auto loan for my first car--needless to say, I took a second part time job.

Everybody’s Grandfather has a Buick...

I had a recent conversation with a friend whose daughter had also just received her license, so our concerns were very similar: worries of new found declarations of independence, post-curfew kitchen vigils--all the stuff we put our own parents through. Even more similar was the fact that both our kids had received hand-me-down vehicles from their grandfathers, and get this -- both of them Buicks--obviously the car of choice for a particular generation! But coincidences aside, what seemed really odd to us was the fact that these Buicks spent far more time parked in our driveways than we had anticipated. Our kids, even when equipped with vehicles of their own, bought and paid for, seemed to prefer home far more to the open road. It made no sense, with today’s youth being more informed, mobile and definitely more entitled than our generation was; you’d think the seduction of getting yourself out into the world behind the steering wheel would be even greater than it was for me and my teen-aged ilk. There had to be a logical explanation, for teenagers are teenagers, dammit--regardless of what generation you’re in. Perhaps it’s the Buick--I guess you can remove the hat from the rear deck, but it’s still your grandfather’s car...

Seeing your Friends Face-to-Face is like, so 2009!

OMG! Then it dawned on me; Skype, Facebook, Four Square--who needs to actually go anywhere, anyhow? Kids in particular have never been more connected with one another through any number of electronic media, to the extent that there simply is no more guessing what anyone is doing at any given time. It’s all out there, anything you need to know about most anyone, especially your friends. No more driving down to the local McDonald’s parking lot to see who’s hanging out--a couple of key strokes and you already know. There is no longer a need to “make the scene”, since the “scene” is on-going and everywhere, relentlessly updating itself, as long as you have a decent Internet connection. What can a mere car provide in terms of information delivery when you’re dialed into the omniscience of Social Networking? No wonder kids don’t want to leave the house--you might miss a status update.

On some levels this is disturbing, the soul-less lack of true face-to-face social interaction typified by today’s youth. Getting out of the house for those of my generation was like a lifeline to sanity; an escape from the constraints of our households to declare even a tiny bit of our independence. Therefore it’s difficult to imagine that this rite of passage has somehow gone missing.

Chill, Daddy-O

Yet I suppose it’s not all that bad. As miraculous as it seems, today’s teens seem to have found a way to transcend the hum-drum of their parent’s confines while remaining in the next room. The brighter side of this quandary is at least we know exactly where they are physically, even if their mind is tuned out from us and checked in on the latest virtual social scene.

And for those like me who are not quite ready to roll the dice with a new teenage driver, that may not be a bad thing after-all.