My oldest brother Brian was home for the summer from college, and spent his nights packing ice. He’d come home in the wee hours, quickly falling into a deep, beer induced sleep as the rest of the world was starting to rustle and rise. He would have been 21 and I would have been 14 or 15. Maybe we were both older, it’s hard to tell. Brian was in school a long, long time.

That summer he was using a friends car to get around Anchor-town: a late 70’s model bubble shaped gray/silver Honda station wagon. When his shift ended at 7 or 8am and he fell into bed, I’d track down the keys and sneak out of the house with them. Then I’d scoot out of the neighborhood with the car.

I know I didn’t have a permit, because I didn’t bother with that until I moved to California when I was 18. I do know that I’d driven before, when I pulled a similar number with Kevin and the Pontiac. It’s a miracle I didn’t kill anyone, trying to maneuver that beast and it’s willy-nilly steering when I barely had the coordination skills needed to regulate speed and point it in any one direction at the same time.

The Civic was different though, she was my first experiment with a stick. Luckily, the car had been well loved and driven within miles of it’s death, which meant the clutch was nearly gone. Half the time, I’d start her out in second gear. I barely had to touch the clutch pedal to change gears, and I think I actually figured out I didn’t have to touch it at all. I learned to “gear down” to stop, because the brakes were almost out.

On the days I’d successfully snatch the keys, I’d usually rush over to pick up a friend to join me for the adventure - usually Jenny, I think - and we’d go to the grocery store or the 7-11 or Chez Denoi or somewhere equally thrilling just to explore, observe and enjoy our new freedom.

Looking back, it’s amazing the places that we thought to go - the places we found charming and alluring and the places that made us feel grown-up when we had our first taste of stolen independence.

It’s also interesting to consider what life lessons I took from those grand theft auto-ish moments: if that’s where my wiring for geographical change = sanity was cemented, if that’s where I found that driving brought me freedom and a form of meditation that still exists in me today, if that’s where I found my first tastes of and love for adrenaline and adventure, or if that’s where I taught myself to size opportunity and be spontaneous.

The memories are foggy, a good number of years and miles have passed…and if I’m practical about my memory and weigh in the surrounding reality of that time in my life to average it all out I can conclude that I may have taken only that car out half a dozen times.

All I know for sure is that it felt like an entire summer of freedom, and I don’t think Brian ever figured out what I’d been up to.