My mother once used someone's pilot's license as a fake I.D. The nightclub bouncer was a weekend flier, excitedly querying her experience. Somehow she bluffed through it. Relieved, she drank with abandon, quickly attaining altitude without a license, requiring assistance home. Hearing this tale as a young adult, I had difficulty envisioning my mother capable of reckless youth, believing I owned exclusive rights.

My children don't know I was a serial hitchhiker. While admonishing them to avoid strangers' cars, it seemed imprudent to mention. I also neglected telling my mother.

It started innocently enough, during junior high, thumbing to the beach, movie theater or places not served by city bus lines. Our parents already established they were not summer chauffeurs and walking seemed, well, pedestrian.

I never hitched alone. Once, a friend entered a car, encountering the hitchhiker's fabled red flag (before the advent of child safety locks), the absence of inner door handles. I also carried a meat cleaver in my purse. Okay, it was a cheese cleaver from the Cheese-of-the-Month Club, but that made it multipurpose: protection and handy for an impromptu picnic.

In 1974, I hitchhiked from Munich to Dachau with my high school German teacher, after a night drinking at the Hofbrau House. My chaperone said it was common practice to hitchhike abroad, particularly with oil crisis gasoline prices, and Europe was safer than the States, anyway. This statement struck me as odd, since we were traveling to a former concentration camp.

At college, we hitchhiked without destination, aimlessly crisscrossing town. In September 1977, four of us declared the party scene dull, concluding adventure beckoned from St. Louis. We left the party at 11 pm, heading to the highway. Two out of four knew someone at Washington University, so we figured someone would let us in without reservations.

A trucker drove us most of the 125 miles. He turned on the interior cab lights whenever his C.B. radio chattered, insisting we wave as a group through the windshield as he blew his horn, trumpeting his good fortune. (Flashing was only done by men in raincoats then.)

On Wash U's campus at 2 am, we repeated our unsuspecting contacts' names to every stumbling student we encountered. Directed to a dorm, we discovered the two random acquaintances of my companions (one from Indiana, the other from Pennsylvania) happened to be roommates. It also happened to be Parent's Weekend, necessitating a discreet exit before 7 am; by then, we were looking pretty rough.

Breakfasting at their Commons, I ran into a girl from my high school.

We exclaimed simultaneously, "What are you doing here?" The last I'd heard, she was sharing a Minneapolis apartment with my old beach hitchhiking pal. She explained she registered at Wash U on a whim.

Hitchhiking was like that, lives crossing each other like interstate cloverleafs. Still, I cannot recommend reckless youth to my children, since it may require a pilot's license or cheese cleaver.