Fifty years ago yesterday, my husband got his driver's license*. That marked a turning point in his life, and our family has celebrated this day for many years because . . . well, because we love celebrating things, and this seemed as good an excuse as any to gather together festively.
* As a geeky aside: I seem to be terrible at spelling that word: where do the 's's and 'c's go? Lisence? Liscence? Licence? It turns out that "license" -- c first, then s -- comes from the same root that gave us "licentious" and "licit" (as well as "illicit"): Google tells me the word comes from licentiac ‘freedom, licentiousness’ (in medieval Latin ‘authority, permission’), from licere ‘be lawful or permitted’. Okay, so now I know.
So, our family celebrates the Driver's License dinner, also known as the Car Dinner, which is a heck of a lot easier to spell. We dress up --- which for most of us means we dress up very warmly, because more on that in a moment; but some of us get dressed up in Driving-themed Togs, and
yes, I mean Dogs in Togs.
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Look at that waggy tail! Do you see the "spoiler" on her back?
It's Dog Earnhardt, of course. |
The rest of us dress warmly because we walk to a nearby Diner. The "warmly" is important because the weather outside is frightful, as the song goes. The "walk" is because now that we live in the heart of the city, we're less than a mile away from the nearest Diner, and it seems silly to start up a car in frigid weather and drive it a distance so short it couldn't even warm up properly. And yes, we think it's highly amusing that we're walking to the Car Dinner. And finally, the "Diner" is because we tried for years to think about how to throw a themed Car Dinner at home, and failed. So the annual Car Dinner is our only Special Dinner that is at a restaurant.
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| Oh, the weather outside is frightful . . . |
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| . . . but the diner is so delightful. |
Happy anniversary, guy!
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