Thought I'd share a (now) funny story, when I was around 18, my now ex (boyfriend at the time) and I went to a wedding somewhere way out in the country. I couldn’t tell you exactly where. It was one of those places where the roads start losing their signs, and everything starts looking the same after dark.

He drove a stick shift, and maybe a month before the wedding, he had taught me how to drive it too. I’d had just a few hours of practice. Nothing serious. I wasn’t great at it, but I could get us from point A to point B if I had to. Turns out I had to.

He drank a little too much at the wedding and asked if I could drive us home. I said sure, thinking I could figure it out. I didn’t know the area super well, but had ridden passenger enough with him that I felt I remembered how to get back. He passed out in the passenger seat pretty early on, and I just kept driving. For about an hour and a half, it was me, the open road, and the hum of a car I was still kind of figuring out. Eventually, he woke up and looked around, confused. “Where are we?” I said, “I don’t know” and just kept trucking along waiting for the next highway sign.

A few minutes later, his mom called him. It was close to 2 a.m. at that point. She asked the same question. “Where are you guys?”

Again, I said, “I don’t know.”

Apparently, I had missed our exit by about 40 miles. Just completely passed it. No idea. We ended up finding our way back, and no one was mad. Honestly, we laughed about it for weeks. Still makes me laugh now, thinking about how confident I was in the moment and how completely off course we were.

That drive was probably one of the first times I felt the mix of independence and inexperience that comes with being just barely an adult. I was doing my best with the little I knew, hoping it was enough to get us home. And eventually, it was. Just 40 miles later than planned. Just one of those moments that sticks with me that makes me laugh even now, and is worth a share.