02/04/2002 - 9:06 p.m.

Baby, you can drive my car.

Right, well, yes. Now, I'm going to try and be objective and polite here.

Oh well, so much for objective. And, as far as that goes, so much for polite too. This bloody course allows you to miss one class out of 16. One. For all of those Tuesdays and Thursdays if you had anything planned, well, tough shit to you too. OK, now, here's a rundown- I've got mandatory musical rehearsal, mandatory choir concert, mandatory annual GS board meeting, and semi-worrying threats on my life from parents who are, shall we say, a tad insistant that I pass the driving class without their having to spend more money.

The whole class is an absolute laugh. "We know you signed up with your friend so get with them and you can drive together all the time" (no friends in the class- aside from Jenny who's there with somebody already). I'm with some strange person I've not even yet seen.

Our first assignment was to write a paragraph about how much we wanted to drive. I explained my predicament in much better linguistic style than I have ever explained it here. It doesn't involve any explatives and just quite frankly says that I'm 18 and I'm forced to be here but I don't want to because I would rather (and I didn't use this analogy) be trapped in an elevator with Mrs. Tatge for an hour than learn to drive.

Everybody else got all excited and started talking about how cool they were and how they were going to drive everywhere and it was a symbol of freedom. Freedom my ass. It's a symbol that you're tied to a car rather than a person for everything. I'd much rather answer to a person than an inanimate object. Then we've got the instructor waxing orgasmic about his first car and how you never forget that, how it felt to ride in it, about the good times you had with it. (I still refrain- it's an inanimate object!)

I've a load of other homework to get done tonight or I'd finish some other things, but that was two hours of repressed fury (the greater part of it expended on my mother during the 20 minute return drive to the house) that really needed sharing.