Teens views: Who buys the car: Teen or parent?

Teen

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by Tahreem B

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Having had almost a year and a half's worth of driving lessons, I think it's about time I took the test. However I am finding it increasingly difficult to muster up the courage and take that final step. I mean only recently has my courage defeated almost all the demons that swirl around in my head telling me something is bound to go wrong when my driving instructor is not with me, and knowing how clumsy I am anything is possible from knocking a poor innocent pedestrian minding their own business on a pavement to causing a one-woman obstruction on the motorway. Yet at the same time I think it's also a case of motivation. If I had a car then I would feel more compelled to take my test as I have something to work towards. The only thing stopping me from getting a car is that I do not want my parents handing it on a plate to me.
For me to just be given a car kills the sense of achievement that I want to feel when I take it for a drive. Also I think it's unfair, as my parents have never given me a reason to complain all my life. They have provided anything a child needs and more, i.e. at the moment they pay my tuition fees, and to expect them to buy me a car is just plain lazy in my eyes. I am old enough and mature enough to earn a respectable amount, in order to buy a second hand car. Bizarrely enough, telling my parents that I want to buy my own car, would make them think that I feel like I am a burden to them, hence making them even more determined to buy me a car.
This situation is rather strange to me, because I usually find people complaining how they had to buy their own cars, and how lucky others are that their parents bought theirs for them. In my eyes, unless you have a perfectly feasible reason, having your parents buy your first car just makes reality even more distorted and wraps you further in cotton wool, because you then carry on going through life expecting everything to just be 'done' for you. By this I mean being able to mature takes a lot longer. If throughout your life you have never truly had to work really hard to earn something, i.e. material possessions, then this is not a good foundation for what you may want to achieve in the future, because this is not just about the material possessions, it is about the significance of earning them.
When you have worked hard for anything you feel proud to have attained the result, and along the way you learn lessons about discipline, self-respect and respect for those around you. When your parents buy you something, you thank them and then become possessive over that possession, forgetting the fact that your parents worked increasingly hard to achieve their wanted result, in other words seeing their child happy. I guess this is because the feeling of it never truly being yours is always at the back of your minds, even though your parents do not expect anything in return from you. At the risk of sounding a little selfish, in order for your car to feel completely your own you need to make some effort in buying. Even if your parents do buy a car, you can't keep asking them for petrol money, or to sort out your insurance, because they do have lives of their own.
At the end of this 'insightful' piece as to who should buy your first car, I strongly feel it should be the Teen, or whoever's first car it is going to be. When a car is bought there are lots of costs that come with it such as petrol and insurance, so until I am capable of paying for these I am going to stick with public transport. The truly lucky ones are those who understand that the fruit of labour are only sweet if you have achieved them yourself.

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