As I began my sophomore year and November 27 rapidly approached, I became more andmore anxious. I was going to be one of the first kids in my grade to get mypermit and hopefully my license. This, of course, was a guaranteed free ride to arevived social life. The only obstacle was my parents.

"You bettershow us that you're responsible enough to drive, Brian. If you do anything stupid...."

What nonsense! Any sensible teenager knows that responsibilityhas nothing to do with driving a car in any way shape or form. And I didn't carehow many of my little sister's Barbies met an early demise, I swear that hadnothing to do with me and, even if it did, it wasn't any indication ofirresponsibility.

Well, November 27th came and sure enough Mom and Dadfolded and took me to the Department of Motor Vehicles. Thanks to my dad, whofeels the necessity to drive like a 98-year-old lady anytime we're running late,the DMV was closed by the time we got there. But finally, after another day ofwaiting, we made it there when it was still open.

For those of you whohave never been to the DMV, it's not the coziest place. I am convinced thatconvicted robbers and axe murderers are allowed to work there as an alternativeto prison time. My first obstacle was, of course, the permit test. After sittingin an isolated room for an hour waiting for them to hand me a piece of paper with20 questions on it, I took the test and handed it in. The other thing I lovedabout taking the permit test was the fact that you are forced to wait in a roomfor an hour while they grade your test. This way you can watch the five otherkids who took the test be-fore you go up, find out they failed and run from theroom shouting expletives.

Needless to say, all this didn't ex-actlystrike a chord of optimism in me. Then my father, the shining ray of common sensethat he is, decided he should poke his head into the high-security testing roomto ask how I did. He was promptly ejected. Apparently he is not one who learnsfrom experience, considering that 30 seconds later he figured maybe he deservedsome sort of merit from the security guards for being stubborn and that they'dlet him into the room.

With shattered peace of mind and adad-turned-public-disturbance waiting outside, my name was called and I went upto find out if I would be driving home. This wasn't so nerve-wracking after all.I passed. Woohoo! Now I could go to school the next day and tell everyone howeasy the permit test was so they could all feel stupid when they failed. As hardas my parents and the Gestapo - I mean the DMV - tried, they couldn't get betweenthis teenage boy and his wheels.