Driving

Always an unusual topic to bring up, yet the youngest is starting to drive now so it is on my mind quite a bit of late.
And no one wants to hear some “old person” as my children would say lecture them on driving. And I really don’t want to hear me lecture my children on driving. Always falls on deaf ears.

Yet we all have our pet peeves about how other drivers behave. No one wants to be caught behind the person going 20 mph under the speed limit in the left lane. Or go 90 weaving back and forth through all lanes till they get stuck in the right lane and cannot get out. We all hate the person that just drove across three lanes in one second to make an exit. How ticked were you when the third person in a row just ran the red light while you waited at a green light?

And there are more and more examples you and I can think of just to waste an evening with a good bitchin’ session. Doesn’t solve any problems, no one is going to get better. Jerks will be jerks and we all have to live with them or learn to walk again or take the bus. And oh yeah, how many times have we made the same mistakes we complain about. Yeah guilty as charged here.

So how do you teach a young adult to drive with all this insanity going on? And throw in let’s not text and drive, not talk and drive, not eat and drive, not drink and drive, not doing anything but drive while driving. Yep the kids sure hear that message. I know I did(n’t). Well we were lucky, there were no phones when the dinosaurs roamed the earth. We just had to worry about eating and drinking or not eating and drinking. And especially the drinking, but that problem still continues today. (I once wrote a post about drinking and driving looking at the problem or wanting solutions in a different light, but that was a post for another rational). Anyway it is hard to convince the kids to just sit behind the wheel of a car and just drive, and you know… pay attention.

And it is hard for them. The distractions are numerous, the parents are overbearing, and the other drivers scare the crap out of me. Yet somehow my three oldest managed to learn and are still alive.

I can remember friends of mine who were good drivers as teenagers and some who were horrible. I feel confident it is the same now as then. So if my children learn to know the difference when they are out and about that maybe the best I can hope for till they have their own children and realize how really scary it is driving. Nothing like the love of a two week old to make you want to kill every other driver on the road who “doesn’t know what they are doing”.

So as the youngest begins this new adventure in life, pray that I maintain the last vestiges of hair on my head and that she survives her practice drives with me.

So please don’t be out there tailgating the old man in the HOV lane, go flying by him over the top bridge of what use to be called spaghetti bowls and then try to pass someone on the shoulder of the entrance ramp back onto the highway, hit the light pole knocking it down across the road and blocking traffic for everyone behind the accident. Yes this actually happened with the youngest in the car a few years ago. She never hears the end of this. So please spare the next child in line all the agony of a tired old man trying to teach them to drive after having witnessed another young child royally screw things up one day. And those extra-long light poles are extremely cumbersome to move off the road just to get by, took about ten of us because it was so long.

And on side note, do the Rangers have to make this too interesting right now. Sheesh! Glad they are coming home.