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Not having a driver's license isn't just inconvenient. It's practically un-American.

Out There by Alicia Potter

If what Volkswagen says is true -- that on the road of life there are passengers and there are drivers -- then my existence is one big lookout for a rest stop.

I don't know how to drive.

It's a revelation, I've learned, right up there with admitting to having webbed toes or a soft spot for The Postman. It has the power to make otherwise open-minded people blurt: "I . . . can't . . . believe . . . you . . . don't . . . know . . . how . . . to . . . drive."

If I'd been reared in Manhattan, my inability to drive might carry a certain cachet, a soupçon of sophistication or urbane mystery. But since I grew up in Mattapoisett, Massachusetts (trust me, it exists), this idiosyncrasy apparently makes me, as Volkswagen hints, more passive than posh. Maybe even a little pathetic.

Yet I've lived the Fahrvergnügen-free lifestyle with few complaints. Just give me the map and the radio dial: I'm happy riding shotgun.

It's not that I never wanted to learn how to drive. I did. The summer before I went to college, I enrolled in driving school. Once a week at a groggy 8 a.m., Mr. Raposa, my teacher, made a well-signaled turn into our driveway. The car -- a white Aries K with caramel interior -- was clean and quiet and undaunting.

The same could not be said of Mr. Raposa.

"Young lady!" he'd exclaim, as I backed into the curb. He had the slick black hair of an otter, and a faint musty smell floated from his short-sleeved button-downs. His forearms were a thicket of dark curls. "Young lady! Do you realize there could have been a small child behind you?" he'd ask.

I killed a playground's worth of these small children that summer. At one point, after a particularly unproductive parallel-parking episode, Mr. Raposa rubbed his brow with a hirsute back of hand and tried to deconstruct my apparent lack of mechanical coordination. "You're a young lady who prefers books to sports, am I right?" he asked.

Needless to say, August went by even faster than I merged onto the freeway, and I headed off to college in Boston without my license. I swore I'd resume my lessons on vacation breaks, but internships and jobs always distracted me. And in the city, I did quite nicely with the T, cabs, and my own two feet.

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Most folks assume I'm either dreadfully inconvenienced or hopelessly dependent. On the contrary. Thanks to public transportation, Bonanza, and Amtrak, I rarely bum rides. Only a few times have I felt screwed because I couldn't just hop in a car and drive somewhere. Most of those occasions were frivolous, like an urge to go factory-outlet shopping; a couple, I admit, were profoundly disappointing, such as having to skip my 10-year high-school reunion.

Still, it's never been enough for me to start cramming for my permit test. To me, the cost of driving -- the lessons, the car, the insurance, the maintenance -- hardly sounds liberating. And then there's the madness: I need only think of my friend Gwynne to realize what a car can do to you. Pushed to neurosis over parking, she amassed so many tickets that her car was impounded. But rather than ante up the money for the fines -- $2500 -- she opted to have the car totaled; the sum of her violations had surpassed the value of the car.

The societal pressure to drive, however, is almost enough to make the responsibility tolerable. "Not driving is like saying you don't want to vote," says my friend Teri, who didn't get her license until she was 27. "It's un-American."

Indeed, nondrivers miss out on a whole chunk of our country's culture. Route 66. The Pacific Coast Highway. Route 1. I've never put the pedal to the metal, run a red light, tailgated, fishtailed, suffered from road rage or highway hypnosis, pulled a "U-ee," hugged the road, or caressed a curve. These three words have never passed my lips: "Fill 'er up."

And Hollywood does its share to make me feel out of it. Imagine if Thelma and Louise had taken the bus? Films are full of endings in which the heroine, beleaguered by man troubles and jobs that require her to wear polyester, peels out in an asthmatic Duster, never to look back.

It's a type of independence I've never known: the power to just drive away. However, freedom doesn't come only with a fan belt. In a country built on drag races and drive-ins, where success is measured by how many cars fit in your garage, I'm saying I want none of it. In its own way, life on my side of the stick shift is strangely liberating.

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Am I deluded? Not at all. It's not as if I lost the one chance I had of getting a license. Should I move to a less pedestrian-friendly city or start fancying interstate travel, I will have no embarrassment about being a 30-year-old, or even a 40-year-old, with a learner's permit. For now, I lump driving in the same category as getting married or buying a house: I'll do it someday, but it's just not a priority.

That's not to say I don't have my moments. Recently, while waiting for a dinner date at a hotel, I wandered into the arcade to face a phalanx of blinking video games. I passed by Vampire Savior, Maximum Force, and even Hoop It Up, settling on a driving-simulation game called Cruis'n USA. I slipped into the driver's seat, located the pedals, and fed the machine my quarter.

I chose my vehicle -- a copper Corvette -- and a cartoon bimbo in a pink bikini waved the checkered flag. With a quick touch to the pedal, I was cruis'n the Arizona landscape.

For about five seconds, I stayed in my lane. Then I plowed down a telephone pole. "Whoa!" exclaimed the bimbo -- not entirely without admiration -- from somewhere inside the machine. Back on the road, I was suddenly faced with the steely grate of a speeding 18-wheeler. I swerved, maneuvering my car to scale a mesa. Yikes! Then, returning to the serpentine road, I squashed a row of saguaros ("Whoa!"), spun out, and smashed, CHiPs-style, into several oncoming vehicles.

I lasted 54 seconds. A near-minute of wanton destruction, tinged with, yes, giddy exhilaration. I emerged from the driver's seat a little nauseated, not to mention a tad intrigued. In real life, the consequences would have been rather different, and hardly thrilling. So when the time came to go to dinner, I was happy -- quite happy -- to walk.

Alicia Potter can be reached at apotter@tiac.net.