Getting a driver's license is only the start of it. Turning, swerving, speeding, stopping, backing up, slowing down, parking. Those are options for living, too. But at 16, the guardrails have lowered, the training wheels no longer touch the ground and the seat belt of family can't always save you from tough problems. There's a toll for taking some roads, a toll for ignoring others.
Small mistakes can have big implications.
And as the Class of 2000 is discovering, the urge to drive doesn't necessarily mean you're ready for life's expressway. In 1988, the Pioneer Press began following 26 students from a first-grade class at Mississippi Creative Arts Magnet School in St. Paul. This year, they're 10th-graders straddling adolescence and adulthood. With some, the ideal of innocence has dissolved under the weight of grown-up experiences. Tracy Lee, a seventh-grade runaway who had rebounded so well a year ago, dropped out of Johnson High and learned this spring she's pregnant.