When discussing traditional milestones of American adulthood -- marriage, babies, investing in something beyond an extensive sneaker collection -- learning to drive rarely enters the conversation. This is because most people accomplish that feat before their brains are fully formed. That's how easy it is, I guess -- but I wouldn't know.

I've survived almost 30 years without a driver's license. There are a number of reasons I've abstained so long: I was raised in Brooklyn, where my impression of cars was that it took two hours to park them and they served as an additional way to get robbed. When I moved to the suburbs in my teens, I knew my parents couldn't afford to buy me a car or even add me to their insurance, and I preferred to spend my meager earnings on necessities such as pot and Taco Bell. Why squander my menial paychecks on self-sufficiency when I could binge on mystery meat and sweet ganj instead?

Accepting my carless future as fate, I became something of a charity case -- relying on friends, family, and the occasional stranger to get around. I knew this wasn't sustainable, so I made plans to move back to Brooklyn after college. There, the MTA would enable me to feign competence. (This worked for eight years, until the thought of inhaling one more stranger's coffee breath sent me screaming toward California). But, in hindsight, all of the "practical" excuses I had invented were a veil for what was really happening: I was (am) terrified of driving.