My life would have been much simpler, I think, if I had learned how to drive when I came to America. An American without a car is a sick creature, a snail that has lost its shell. Living without a car is the worst form of destitution, more shameful by far than not having a home. A carless person is a stationary object, a prisoner, not really a grownup. A homeless person, by contrast, may be an adventurer, a vagabond, a lover of the open sky. The only form of identification an American needs is a driver’s license.

Time and time again I stood humiliated before a bank clerk who would not admit to my existence because a passport meant nothing to her. Over and over I’ve had to prove my existence to petty clerks and policemen for whom there is only one valid form of ID. Driven to despair, I wrote my first autobiography, The Life and Times of an Involuntary Genius, at age twenty-three for the sole reason of having my picture on the cover. Whenever a banker asked to see “some identification,” I pulled the book from my mirrored Peruvian bag and pointed to the cover. More often than not, it was not enough. “What we mean is,” the flustered interpreters of rules and upholders of reality would insist, “we want to see some proper ID!” Books have never been proper to those in charge of upholding the status quo.

–Andrei Codrescu, Road Scholar: Coast to Coast Late in the Century

Yes, I took this photo while I was driving. Slowly.

Also see: A driver’s license as national ID?