I was 16 years and 3 months old when I got my driver’s license. My dad took me to the DMV. I drove the nice DMV lady around the block in an ’89 Nissan Stanza and then sat waiting for 20 minutes while they printed up my card, stuck my Polaroid onto it, and slid it through the laminator. I could feel the glow of that plastic rectangle through my purse as I drove my dad and me home, but I didn’t really get it until I was in the kitchen. Nobody else was home. Dinner was a couple of hours away. I didn’t have any homework. And I had my driver’s license! I didn’t have to have an adult in the car with me anymore! I turned to my dad and said, “Can I go to the mall and get David a Christmas present?” He looked about as excited about the prospect as you would’ve expected him to, but to his credit, he handed me the keys and said, “Watch out for the other guy.” I kept giggling to myself on the 10-mile (yes, 10-mile) trek from my house to the Boone Mall.
Let’s be frank. The Boone Mall is a piece of shit. I mean, nowadays there’s an Old Navy, so it’s slightly less of a piece of shit, but back then we’re talking JCPenney, McCrory’s, and K&W Cafeteria. The most exciting retail outlet was either the Walden Books or that place where you’d buy ridiculously over-priced gummi bears and jelly beans just because they were displayed tantalizingly in those jars under the glass counter. I don’t remember whether I bought any gummi bears that day, but I did buy my best friend David a Christmas present, a truly stupid, stupid Christmas present: a toy saxophone from the K&B Toys. Anyway, my point is, despite the fact that it’s a piece of shit, because it was the destination of my first solo trip ever, the Boone Mall still feels like freedom to me.
My friend Sean has a similar association. His older brother was driving the two of them home from school one day, and when they paused at a light, his brother said, “Do you feel like going through the drive-thru at Taco Bell?” It had never occurred to Sean that they might be able to divert the car from the school-home track, and to this day, freedom comes in the form of a Taco Bell bean burrito.
Going hiking is my dogs’ favorite thing in the whole wide world. Of course, watching them be happy makes me happy, AND letting them off the leash is simultaneously nerve-wracking for obvious reasons. I take a pocketful of goodies whenever we go, so they’ll have some incentive to come back to me. And I bet if Violet and Redford could talk, they’d tell you that freedom tastes like chopped up hot dogs.
What says freedom to you?