by RAF KATIGBAK

Sure, there have been a few times in my life when the choices I have made were not completely my own. Of course, when you’re just a gangly teen trying to fit in and make sense of the world, you can be forgiven for making decisions based on what your friends think is cool.

Like in the ’90s when I gave myself a high-top fade not realizing that my particular hair-type made me look less like the guy from Kid ‘n’ Play and more like Kim Jong-il. This, and the time when I impulsively super-sized my family’s birthday spa treatment gift to include a round of botox injections and full pectoral implants (hey, it’s not everyday that you turn 15), are perhaps the few minor instances that immediately come to mind when I think about succumbing to peer pressure.

Oh, and there was that time when I inserted a live anchovy up my ass to join the high-school chess team—which doesn’t really count because it was my idea, and it was totally worth it.

But now, there’s a new stress weighing from all sides; my friends, my family—and I feel that I am going to break down. I can’t stand it anymore. Thanks to increasing pressure, I know that sometime in the next few months I’ll have to do the one thing that I vowed never to do as long as there is blood running through my veins and breath in my lungs. I am going to get a driver’s licence.

Most of you are probably all, “Driver’s licence? So what, no big whup,” but for me and my deadbeat friends growing up in the burbs, not having a license was a statement in itself.

In my high school there were two types of guys. Those who were on the path to success: the future captains of industry who joined the football team, got straight As and who got their licenses as soon as they turned legal age. And then the others that started bands thinking Kurt Cobain and pre-black-album Metallica were the only people who really understood them, and who would rather spend days tweaking their BMX and low-rider bikes only to crash them riding stoned down the kiddie slide at the Centennial Park playground. Which one was I? Let’s say I wasn’t much for sports, and that Master of Puppets is still fucking genius.

But the question remains, do I really need a car in Montreal? Isn’t the city small enough that you can pretty much get everywhere you need to go by BMW (bus, metro, walk)? Besides, isn’t my trusty bike not only cleaner, but sometimes even faster than public transpo, and with new bike lanes popping up all over the city, doesn’t biking make more sense than ever?

The truth is, unless you live off the island, in Montreal you don’t really need a car.

But I have to say; it’s hell of useful when you want to get the fuck out of here. There’s a certain freedom to have even the remote possibility of hopping in your own vehicle, skipping town and heading to the countryside without having to rely on your obnoxious friend who insists on playing his entire opus of Grateful Dead bootlegs the whole way because of his fascist “My wheels, my tunes” policy. Do that enough, and the prospect of staying home eating Cheetos and watching YouTube in your underwear in the throes of Seasonal Affective Disorder sounds like a trip to a tropical paradise.

So that’s it, I’ve made the decision; I need to get a license. So that I can be free of this frozen wasteland once in a while. So I can just hop in a car, spend shitloads on gas, get hundreds of dollars in parking fines, try to not get rammed off the road by some of the worst drivers in North America, pay through the nose for car repairs caused by all the potholes, salt degradation and winter rust, and probably end up totalling my car because I have the attention span of a gnat and will one day be wondering as I pass a certain Plateau restaurant, “How did anyone ever think that putting the words ‘Hot Doggeria’ on a sign was a good idea?” Or maybe I could keep riding my bike and start liking the Grateful Dead... um, Jerry rules!

Riff-Raff@sympatico.ca

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