Independence is something every teenager craves and yearns for. Part of this freedom involves a natural separation from parents, attraction to a significant other, driving on the open road and just plain wanting to be cool.
In all of these respects, I was no different than any normal teenager. I was attracted to any pretty girl who looked my way. I tried to assert myself and pull away from my parents, thinking I was cool enough to blaze my own path. And, most importantly, I was driving. Driving was the epitome of being cool: girls saw me driving (without parents) and the open road was my independence. The South Texas country roads stretched on and on for miles.
At fifteen I was an “experienced” driver of a few years. Since I lived in a ranch, I learned how to drive early on and I often drove with my mother and father as a passenger. But as I headed into the end of my freshman year of high school in San Diego, Texas, I started to spread my wings. My parents allowed me to drive alone. At first I drove alone a few times but soon I got the opportunity to drive out on the open road often. The road between my ranch and the nearby community of San Jose and the small town of Benavides I knew like the back of my hand.
So when the summer of 1986 came I still could see myself looking ahead at the expanse of the summer months and feeling the freedom fill my soul. I knew it was going to be a summer to remember and the start of a new-found freedom that included driving…and who knows what else.
I look back now and ponder how I would have reacted if I was told that by the end of that summer I’d never drive again and that feeling of the wind blowing through the open windows and radio blasting would cease after gaining this freedom, I would have laughed at that person. But that’s exactly what happened.
The summer started with a party at a classmate’s house out in the country. It was my chance to arrive in style driving my dad’s F-150 and showing up alone to the party. No parent figure to escort me. I asked my parents if I could attend the party and drive there and back by myself. My parents agreed. In true teenager fashion, I arrived with music blasting and soon encountered some of my classmates. I fed off the rush of the party and hanging out with the guys and hoped that in the process I was impressing some girl.
By night’s end I impressed no girl but I got a taste of sweet independence and I couldn’t wait for more. After all, the rest of June and all of July and August awaited me.
June pushed on and I continued my driving, heading mostly to Benavides three to four times a week to either cruise around the small community or go to the public pool. Despite not attending high school in Benavides I made lots of new friends and often I’d pick up a few of them and we’d drive around the dusty streets, laughing and jamming out to whatever tune was on the radio. The cruising never got boring and I tracked endless miles up and down those streets. At other times I parked the truck under the shade of a tree at the swimming pool and turned up the radio. People there started to notice me and I felt a sense of importance.
Let me explain that this attention in Benavides was new to me. In my own high school in San Diego I was a nerdy kid often overlooked by most of the student body except when I was picked on by upperclassmen. So this attention gave a well-needed boost to my weak self-esteem. And I’ll be honest, I liked it.
Then came the defining moment of the summer in early July when I bought an Iron Maiden cassette. The band was newly discovered my me and I was obsessed by them and their music. I bought the album Powerslave and started to listen to it immediately and with the fervor of a child with a new toy. Then about a week after buying the album I noticed I had difficulty seeing and reading the tiny print on the album sleeve. For those of you not old enough to remember cassette tapes, they contained the song lyrics on the album sleeve. The only problem was the print was tiny. Still, I had no issue reading the lyrics. But soon I did have problems. I was unable to read the tiny print.
Undaunted, I thought little of it at the time, assuming I needed a prescription for glasses (I had a pair of glasses that helped for minor far-sighted issues, but I never wore them.) I asked my brother to read the songs’ lyrics and I wrote them down on paper. Problem solved. It turned out to be a Band-Aid for what was happening. A week or so later I was unable to read the handwritten lyrics I’d jotted down. At this point, most people would start freaking out and run to tell his or her parents. Not me. I held off. For another few weeks.
Why did I hold off? I don’t know. Maybe it was to continue holding onto this freedom I was experiencing and telling my parents would result in the vanishing of this freedom. So I kept to the road.
- Roel -
(Part 1 of 4)
Something I love about your writing is that there is a brutal honesty, along with a sense of mystery; this keeps my mind intrigued.
Posted by: Brandon | 03/17/2014 at 07:31 PM