Let us just visit some parental logic for a hot minute. You want to get your license but mom and dad say that you can't get your license until you have a car. Now to get this car, you need a job. However, to get to the job, you need a license and a car. Now, if your parents are anything like my parents, this seems completely feasible with absolutely no contradiction what so ever. The rest of the world does see the issue but nonetheless, you end up walking to work or bugging the ever living crap out of your parents to drive you to work and home (and they end up being twenty minutes late despite living up the street and knowing you get done at nine every night). And it is annoying because you see your friends who inherit the family car or get a car gifted to them. But as I got older and entered college, I began to realize just how lucky I was. Both of my cars I paid for and maintained. I pay my insurance. I have bought the things I have wanted and needed. I am paying for college and I will continue to pay for my things. Of course my parents have helped me pay for a few things, but my father would never even consider buying me a car, and it's not because I totaled the first one. My dad has been teaching me a lesson, one I am kind of glad he has. Nothing in life is just handed to you. It just doesn't work that way. My dad taught me early on that nothing was going to be handed to me, and that has shaped who I am. I am more independent than some of my college peers because I now have a work ethic and understand how money works and how to budget my paychecks to continue to pay my bills and still be able to eat. I have my own car that I can keep on campus and nobody can take the car away from me or tell me I can't use it this week. Yeah, it sucks that I have to spend my weekends working. Yeah, it sucks that I can't just text dad and ask for some cash to go to the mall with my friends (he'd straight up laugh at me before telling me that I am out of my mind). But it's an amazing feeling to know that I got MYSELF to where I am today. I got MYSELF into a private university. I got MYSELF a car that runs (just barely but dad says I probably won't die). I can finance my OWN adventures and trips and I no longer have to rely on my parents to be able to do new and exciting things. I like the independence I have acquired and it always makes me chuckle when I hear my peers calling their parents to ask if they could borrow their car this weekend or to see if they could put more money on their meal plans. So I suppose I should say thank you for making me earn my own money and paying for my own things. But in all honesty, I will be incredibly irritated if he decides to buy my sister a car... to put it nicely.