License and Registration Please

 

There is nothing more exciting than when you get your license as a teenager and your parents start trusting you to borrow their car – FREEDOM! (And by trusting you I mean holding their breath until you return it in the driveway in one piece – which let’s be honest, didn’t always happen…)

But first, getting that license required the successful completion of driving school. My younger sister, brother and I all had the same in-car driving instructor and collectively agreed he looked like Tommy Lee Jones – and also realized over the course of conversations later in life that he always made us swing by his house because he’d forget to turn the coffee machine off or close the garage door or let the dog out?! Perks of the job I guess...

Once you pass that nerve-wracking driver’s test – even with the points I got docked because when stopped at an intersection my examiner scolded me for not looking in the bushes thoroughly enough, “There could be wildlife that runs out!” – it’s bye bye bus and hello…

Masters-mobile!

With a family of four kids my Mum drove the quintessential suburban mini van that Patricia, and some of my other friends, quickly dubbed the Masters-mobile on account of my last name. My parents only had one rule with the Masters-mobile and that was DO NOT take it over the bridge to the little French province that neighboured ours.

Why you ask? Because the drinking age was a year below ours and we could buy alcohol there you say? No… and by no I mean, YES!

The Maters-mobile used to take us everywhere – house parties, to school, away from school, skipping school, breakfast at the local diner during spares, the mall, the beach, the movies, cottages… and over the bridge apparently. Désolé Mum!

But it wasn’t always good times – there were a few knicks and bumps and scratches (a couple of teenagers in the house at any given time borrowing the car, I think we did pretty well all things considered – but I do think I still owe my Mum $1k for an underground parking garage post scratch, yeah no, I do…)

But one moment in particular I remember was when I was driving home solo from the gym and diligently followed my driving school learning – when turning left onto a two-lane road, turn into the left most lane, thereby allowing cars in the right most lane to drive on as you come onto the road.

Makes sense, yes? Thanks Tommy!

Well, as I was executing said turn out of the parking lot onto the road, the car in the right most lane happened to be a cop cruiser. But all good, I followed the rules and so why would I be worried?

Um, are those cop lights? Am I being pulled over?

Yes. And also WTF? The police officer approached and told me he pulled me over for my “reckless and dangerous left turn.” Exsqueeze me? Baking powder? When I presented him with the registration papers he noted they were expired, so he would kindly just gift me a ticket for the expired papers and a warning… I kept thinking, a warning for what? Safe merging?

When I got home, I told my Mum what happened and she proceeded to remove the expired papers from the card document holder to reveal the renewed ones tucked behind - she simply hadn't swapped them out yet… off we went to the police station to challenge the ticket. When we arrived, we were met by the officer who had pulled me over just getting off shift so were conveniently able to solve it then and there.

But the officer was none to pleased with this development and proceed to tell my Mum about my “reckless driving.” She simply smiled and said, “I will always believe my daughter over anybody else.” She then went on to show him the renewed papers, got the ticket cancelled and off we went.

That was a life changing moment for me because, I realized I had a renewed responsibility to live up to. Now, I have lied to my mother for sure, but I wasn’t lying in this situation. And she wasn’t mad, she didn’t punish me. She believed me.

And she let me keep right on borrowing the Masters-mobile, to go to school, the movies, my friends houses, breakfast on our spares…

But, I can tell you one thing…

I never took the Masters-mobile across the bridge ever again.

Love,

Grace