Until recently, it was the image of disempowered womanhood in Saudi Arabia. And it’s one of the defining traits of a “scrub,” according to TLC’s anti-scrub anthem (“Hanging out the passenger side/Of his best friend’s ride”).

My life has been marked by moments in cars, from the joyful (road trips where my mom and I would compete against each other in a never-ending game of Yellow Car, keeping score of every non-taxi yellow car we passed on the road), to the tempestuous (like when, at 17, I flung open the side door of my mom’s minivan to tuck and roll down the highway, though I changed my mind), to the surreal (when I drove for the first time two summers ago).

It happened one night in Sterling, Va., at age 26. It was exhilarating and cathartic to skid jagged laps around a parking lot, as if I were a gleeful child playing a frenzied game of go-kart. I felt the freedom that had been in front of my nose the whole time.

I fantasized about all the driving I’d do as a new woman: the rides I’d give people for kindly hauling me around all the time, the texts I wouldn’t send because I value my safety, the music I’d listen to with the windows down.

I’d need a permit and then a license for that, of course.

My aunt Hodan, her daughter Farah and my cousin Sagal were all passengers and witnesses to the crime. My mother might as well have been present, too, so concerned was I about her disapproval.