I was standing with a friend on a corner near my house. We were having an intellectual discussion, by which I mean slandering our peers. All was well. But then, an ugly yellow car drove through the intersection, very slowly, with the windows down, and threw what looked like wadded-up paper balls out the window at us.

“Oh,” I thought, “this is just like subbie year Japanese class.”

I’ve been 16 for almost three weeks, and even though I rushed to get my mandatory 50 hours of driving practice the weeks preceding my birthday, I still don’t have my driver’s license.