At seventeen, I thought I had it all: cool friends with fake IDs, a full agenda of weekend parties, and my car—Tyrone. Tyrone was my grey Mitsubishi Galant, complete with tinted windows and a tape player. It was my senior year, and my parents gave my sister Anita and me a car so we could get back and forth from our after school jobs—mine at the highly coveted Noah’s Bagels, and hers at an Italian Deli. Sick of chauffeuring us around, the car was their plan of giving us a little more independence. It worked.
Every weekend, my friends and I would reluctantly take turns being designated driver to keg parties, where we would consume gallons of the cheapest beer we could find, and somehow make it home without alcohol poisoning or a jail sentence. When it was my turn to drive, Tyrone was my steadfast, sober friend. His conveniently tinted windows hid any debaucherous activities from the outside world. From splifs to forties to kissing boys in the back seat, Tyrone endured a lot of innocent high-school naughtiness. (Sorry mom and dad). After many late night weekends without a wink of sleep, I’d drive trusty old Tyrone to my 6 a.m. job selling bagels. To this day, I don’t know how I powered through so many weekends of no sleep and crack-of-dawn shifts, ringing up cheery early risers eager to stuff their well-rested faces with bagels and shmear. Needless to say, I don’t think my boss was too fond of me; I knew for sure when she told me I cared way to much about my social life and not enough about my job. She was right. What did she really expect? I was seventeen.
After the SATs had been taken, applications to colleges sent in, and acceptance letters received, I came down with a major case of senioritis. I’m already accepted to college, what the hell are they gonna do, unaccept me? That was my general attitude for the second half of the school year. My friends and I would play hooky, Tyrone as our navigator, and drive up to Taco Bell or the local convenience store where fellow high school kids would gather to smoke cigarettes and look cool, while discussing weekend activities. Many nights were spent with my girlfriends cruising in Tyrone around our small, unexciting town, windows down, a mixed tape containing Dr. Dre and Tu Pac blazing, and us rapping like we knew the words as we drove aimlessly through the tree-lined streets of Suburbia. Come to think of it, we never knew the words.
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