All Battery:
I never had homework until high school. My whole childhood life, I have known the same people, and gone to the same school. Private, and closed in with walls, I lived my whole life closed away from the public school ways. All year round, no homework, no desks, no breaks, that’s how I lived my years of school growing up.
It wasn’t somewhere in the middle of a farm, or even a school for “gifted” students, it was just different. Every morning, I would wake up, with the coldness of the 6:00 air in my room. Stumbling out of my door, almost feeling blind, I make it into the bathroom across the hall. Turning on the shower, there was no sunlight shining thought the window, just the dawn of a new day. Still practically asleep, walking, I get in the car after breakfast just to become even colder. “The car hasn’t warmed up yet” my dad would say every morning. But it never quite did by the time we got to school.
My school was unlike any other, full of smart people who finished calculus in 7th grade, and knew how to memorize everything they read. On the other hand, that wasn’t me; I didn’t even finish algebra 1 by 8th grade, let alone calculus.
With a total of 100 people at my school, I never had the same interests as other people: I liked cars. I wasn’t the type of person who liked the newest Audi or even the classic red Ferrari, I was one of the people who loved the idea of cars parking for themselves, or having it make its own decisions. By the time the DARPA challenge for self-driving cars came out, my interests spiked. “That’s the coolest thing ever,” I thought to myself as I watched Stanford’s “Stanley,” a Volkswagen Touareg driving for itself, passing other cars through a desert challenge. “I need to have one, I need to live to the point where that comes out in all cars!” I thought to my self again. With my mind running crazy about ‘Stanley’, from then on I never focused on how many cylinders a car had, but on what IT could do: Make decisions for itself, keep its self on the road, or even keep itself in your lane. It all depended on what lies beneath.
As I grew up and was getting closer to being able to finally drive for my self, more and more advanced cars started to come out. Yes, the all-electric vehicle came out too, but it didn’t do much, on the other hand the first Toyota Prius came out. Aside from being one of the ugliest cars I have ever seen, I heard of the wonders it did for gas mileage and how it could decide to use gas/electric engines at different times. Years later when the newer model came out, Toyota gave it a whole new look, sporty, and convenient. This was what I thought was a COOL CAR. Touch screen, auto climate control, High intensity discharge headlights, traction control, back up camera, and more…I knew everything there was to know about this car.
“Ew that’s so ugly” is the only thing I heard about it, but that never fazed me. When my mom had to buy a new car (Company requirement) she looked to the newer Toyota Prius. I was instantly excited to hear of that and needed a ride to see the “all battery” mode along our neighborhood streets. With the sound of crunching leaves under each tire being louder than the engine, I was liking the slow pace ride even more. I thought it was the coolest thing, it had everything on it that I wanted and more, I kept saying it was “my car” before I could even get my permit to drive, but the more I said it the more I believed it.
Eventually when it was time to drive, my mom knew I had wanted the new Prius and without telling me was going to give it to me. She waited until I got my license where I learned that I got to drive it. I couldn’t be happier, that A) I get to drive a car, and B) it’s a car I had wanted. The larger majorities, who like the newest Audi, still give me those crappy comments like “Haha you drive a Prius” or “I feel bad for you” don’t know the true value of my car. They don’t have anything that my car does, besides a better engine, so they can eat my eco friendly dust!
When I look back on it, my school full of giftedly smart people, shaped me into the person I am today, unlike everyone else, not the one who falls for the general publics ideals and defiantly not one to care about what people think.