I am the proud owner of a 2003 Dodge minivan. It may have taken me quite a while before I was able to throw the word “proud” in the middle of that sentence, but I am no longer ashamed. If you’re rocking a minivan as a young adult, you know the ups and downs (a disproportionate amount of downs, yes, but nothing that won’t build character). Here are just a few of the symptoms of driving a minivan:

1. You’ve given up caring what people think about you while driving

I blast my music (as loud as the van’s speaker system allows), speed through traffic (as fast as the van can physically accelerate), and throw my arms out of my rolled down windows (only the front two), and disregard any confused looks while doing so. After years of driving around in a minivan, you know what people are thinking when they see you on the roads. “Someones on their way to soccer practice!” Or “Keep your distance, possible pedophile ahead.” It takes time and lots of confidence to rock a minivan as a young adult, but it’s extremely necessary if you plan on not participating in self-loathing. So as minivan drivers, we need to break those stereotypes and ride with confidence.

2. You can fit your entire friend group inside

Depending on whether or not you like driving everywhere, being able to fit a large crowd inside your van is either a perk or drawback. Either way, it’s super convenient for your friends. You can show up to an event in one vehicle and also be the entirety of the event’s population. However, you have to accept the fact that if you are the driver of the van, you will not, and should not try to hear the people in the way back seat’s conversation. It’s just not possible with a full car, and turning the music up and down in order to hear, will not aid in your attempts. You can also expect shotgun and bucket seats to be called immediately from your most high maintenance friends.

3. Getting gas makes you cry

With great power comes great responsibility, and owning a large vehicle, such as a van, is no exception. Gas isn’t cheap when you’re hauling around an elephant. While the tank is big, so is the dollar sign. Personally, it took me upwards of 50 dollars to fill my tank. However, my financial status being as it is, you can expect me filling it up to between 7 and 17 dollars per stop. Realistically I understand that I am spending the same amount of money in the end, but I might actually cry a little if I drop a full tank’s worth of cash in one stop.

4. It becomes your second closet

You have more space in a minivan, which means more space to hold all the crap you could ever need. If I were to give inventory on the contents of my van right now, it would probably include four different outfits, somewhere around 13,000 water bottles, enough food to last me through the week, a handful of my friend’s crap that they’ve left there and probably won’t get back, and the mysterious unknowns of the ends of the earth. It can be convenient to have an extended closet, but if it gets too out of hand you’re stuck with a mess of a vehicle and probably an angry mom (even though she doesn’t actually ride in your van and should realistically not need to care).

5. When you’re driving alone you never know if there’s a murderer in the far back seat

This one isn’t a joke. I cannot even begin to count the amount of times I have been driving alone at night and see something move in the way back seats, but because of the football field-like distance between the driver’s seat and the back I can never know for sure. This leads to me sitting in silence for the rest of the ride and talking loudly about how I have a deadly weapon next to me in the passenger seat, in a futile effort to scare the potential murderer. While I know what I’m seeing is probably just the garbage I throw back there, when it’s dark and you’re alone, nothing can be ruled out. If you think I’m being irrational, it’s probably because you don’t drive a minivan (so your opinion is irrelevant anyways).

So hopefully now you’ve reached a better understanding of what it means to drive a minivan and the next time you see one on the road maybe you’ll stop and think “hey, that could very well be a kid just like me but with the misfortune of having a mom with poor taste in cars in the early 2000’s.”