Driver’s Ed. A New Paradigm for Parenthood
This could have been us.
Sympathize with me I beg you, for I took my son driving today. I should say he took me, and that was the root of the problem. I know what you’re thinking. He’s only twelve! It’d take a neglectful father to have him drive. Well… Be that as it may, I did. The age at which a child can get a drivers license in North Dakota is 14 years and, yes, I do think that that’s too young. On the other side, I think it takes a long time and a lot of practice to make a good, solid and careful driver. Therefore, I’ve decided to take him to remote and seldom used roads and slowly, very slowly teach him to drive. Keyword: slow.
Whew! Today’s lesson went great, I mean really well, until the tree. Not that we hit it, mind you, but we came very close to taking off the passenger mirror, very very close. To my credit I never got upset. I took it like a champ only a trickle of sweat dripping down my face as I repeatedly hammered my nonexistent passenger brake. But… To my very serious detriment, I must admit it was mostly my fault. I drew attention to something we were passing, forgetting who was actually behind the wheel, and he did that,oh so common mistake that so many beginning drivers make. He turned where he looked. My cries of Stop! Stop! and For the love of Darwin, stop! only made him freeze up. Truly, I believe he forgot in the moment which was the brake. We were only doing about 15 miles an hour at the time, so it wouldn’t have been bad. Well, not terrible anyway. But as this is the speed at which our airbags would activate, it would have been interesting to say the least. Likely painful too.
But the Flying Spaghetti Monster acted copilot and accepted the sacrificed goat I offered her, and we missed, though I’m pretty sure you couldn’t have slid a nickel between the mirror and the tree. But we did miss. Probably not even a dime.
I believe this is only a small taste of the terror to which I am sentenced. My doom is upon me, for I am at the threshodl of the teenage years. This is just the next step of him growing up and being thrown into what is, once you think about it as a parent, a remarkably dangerous world. Of course after that there is the terror of having him drive without me in the car, then moving out and living on his own then the wife and I living in an empty nest… alone. Sigh.
I believe drugs and alcohol may be the only solace.
For me not him. I’ll have earned the release by then.
Yikes, I have that to look forward to in a couple of years.
On the bright side of things to offer solace, you accidentally (no pun intended) designed a perfect situation for your son to learn to be more cautious about looking around while driving. I remember my driver’s ed teacher doing that to me, asking me to look at, of all things, a Jehovah’s Witness building, which they had built, he said, in a remarkably short period of time, like two days or something. I suspected a trap and declined to look, which he commended me for, though I don’t think he had actually intended a trap. Strange guy.
You need JESUS as your copilot!
(For the full affect the above should be read in the style of James Brown in The Blues Brothers. Dancing is optional)
http://www.jesusandmo.net/2006/12/13/road/
I sympathize, I truly do, but I’m also laughing a bit. Thing is, I tried the same thing with my 15-yr old cousin when he begged to learn to drive, and he didn’t miss the tree. Bent the frame and the axle, wasn’t worth it to fix the car after that. You got lucky this time, but he’s only 12, he’ll have plenty more chances to cost you a car.
Also, good to know the FSM accepts goat, that’s valuable info I can use in the future.