Virgins (maybe) who can't drive

It's almost like we shouldn't let children operate mini-tanks

A witch posted this Q online—

“The son of a friend of mine got in an accident immediately following getting his driver’s license (like IMMEDIATELY). Witches, do you have a story from an early bad driving experience?”

A truly disturbing number did, making me glad there’s a bus stop on our corner because I don’t think I want my kids to drive until they’re 42. Feel free to share your own early driving foible in the comments (if you’re a paid subscriber) or Twitter:

“I failed my first driver's test. Parallel parking. It was the first thing we did. I never even left the parking lot.”

“When I turned 16 and had just gotten my license, my parents let me drive to religious school down Lake Shore Drive. I thought I was hot shit rocking out on music and driving too fast. I ended up getting pulled over on LSD. As I cried my face off to the police officer, he ended up giving me a ticket for going 21 over the speed limit. That one extra mph put me in a new category of fines. I ended up having to go to a class to get it erased from my record.”

“I took my mom's car out when my parents went out for the night, wound up accidentally running into my best friend's car and busting her front headlight, then lied and said someone hit the car in the parking lot. My dad said insurance would need to do a ‘full investigation’ and I cracked immediately. I also had a fender bender in another parking lot when I was mid-shift at my smoothie job, and a guy driving a veryyyyy long Cadillac next to me (his car was completely fine) started laughing and said, ‘Oooh girl, your daddy's gonna be mad at you!’ Spoiler: He was!”

“I didn’t even make it out of the parking lot before failing my driving test. I was so nervous that I pulled out of an aisle without looking, and a car almost slammed into me. The test guy was just like, ‘Turn around,’ and I burst out crying.”|

“I took my parents’ car out when I was 14 and crashed it into the side of their garage and then wasn’t allowed to get my license right when I turned 16. It was soon after, though, and within six months, I rear-ended someone when my friend and I were too busy talking and the pavement was wet and I didn't stop in time. I was such a dumbass.”

“My first solo trip in the car was in my dad’s Mustang convertible. I drove out to my school in Calgary’s boonies, and it turns out the road had frosted overnight. I hit a patch of ice going pretty slowly and still did a 180 and crashed into a ditch. Almost totaled the car but luckily emerged without a scratch. And my parents responded by telling me the story of my dad buying a Camaro in the 60s and crashing it while turning out of the dealership parking lot. We talked a lot about the good choices I’d made (I hadn’t been speeding) and how maybe we don’t drive a convertible into the boonies anymore, and my parents made me feel very trusted, and I appreciated that a lot. They did not cut me off from driving. (They just got us a safer car for all weather. WHO BRINGS A MUSTANG CONVERTIBLE TO CANADA? Why, my dad, solely because everyone was like, ‘You’re selling that thing, right?’)”

“1) The first time I tried driving, I drove into a neighbor’s yard, and it was more than just a little bit into their yard. 2) I failed my driver’s test 2x before I got my license. 3) I I was driving on icy roads, and I drove off the road into a pet cemetery and had to be taken to the hospital on a backboard. The tow truck charged extra because the car was more than 500 feet off the road. My mother wouldn’t let me drive with her until I was 28, and even now does not let me use her car when I visit.”

“I got my license at 18, then went off to college and seldom drove till my grandma gave me her old car when I was 30-something. I then proceeded to rack up three fender-benders so quickly that my insurance company sent me a WE ARE WATCHING YOU letter. Just so you know that fuckups can happen at every age!”

“Does it count that I went to get my driver's license, didn't have a document I needed, was told I'd need to wait 11 days for the next available appointment, and stone-cold fainted in the DMV in front of everyone? When I came to, the lady leading over me asked if I might be pregnant, and in my stupor, I yelled, "YEAH RIGHT!" My history teacher, who was my next-door neighbor, had taken me to the DMV because my mom worked. He told ALL the other teachers the next day, and in every class I went to they dunked on me about it. My teachers, in front of the whole class.”

“Do you mean when my 16 year old hit my neighbor’s car and tore my fender as well as ripped a part of theirs and then lied to me and told me she hit a bollard at a gas station, and only once I told her there were cameras at the gas station and began driving her there so we could pick up the fender did she finally confess? You mean like that?”

“When we were running an errand for my parents, my sister backed out of the driveway and into a car parked across the street, freaked out and froze, and then drove off to complete the errand because she was panicking. When we came back, the neighbor came out and was like, ‘Um, I saw you do that?’ She had to promise she didn’t intend to hit and run, but she was twice as embarrassed.”

“So, on the way home from my driving test, with my mom and both brothers in the car, I got pulled over by a cop. I had been messing with the headlights to see how they worked, and he thought I was being kidnapped. They leaned into the car and said, “Are you safe? Are you ok?’ And my mom tried to answer, and they said, ‘Ma’am, I’m not asking you.’ lol”

“I was tasked with picking up Brown’s Chicken for family dinner as my 1st trip alone in the car I shared with two of my brothers. On the way home I thought I saw someone I knew on the curb and I rear-ended a Lincoln Mark VII in my Toyota Celica at 35mph. Thankfully, nobody was injured, but the crash cost $8k in repairs and a summer of outdoor work in order to “pay for the damage”) . The ironic coda is that the car I crashed was owned by the company (our family business, started by my dad and his partner), where I now manage contracts and insurance for, among other things, a fleet of 13 vehicles.”

“I hit my best friend’s grandma the second day I had my license. I should note my friend’s grandma was also in a vehicle.”

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End credits

I hope you enjoyed this issue of Evil Witches, a newsletter for people who happen to be mothers who started off as idiot teens. To that end here is a flashback issue about piercings from our past (I thought of it while talking with a friend last weekend about how top-of-ear cartilage piercings never really heal and cancel sleeping on that particular side.)

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One witchy thing