How Did I Get Here?

Sunday

(Why the wild-eyes look? Not really sure.)

I know I didn’t cover them very well in the blog and I hope they don’t take offense but my brother-in-law and his family left today.

But the thing I did RIGHT today was keeping a promise to my daughter.

When my son turned into a teenager, I took him out driving. What I mean is I let HIM drive.

Not autobahn-like or anything, at a park-and-ride on the weekend when we lived in Virginia, keeping the ancient Grose tradition (starting with me and my brother so I don’t know if “ancient” is the right term) of teaching the youngens how to drive in a park-and-ride. My dad took me to the one off of I-5 and 272nd just like he took my brother.

Not that I like to mimic everything my dad does but since I did it for Alex, Steph would sooner forget to breath than to forget it was her turn when she turned 13.

And I know, I’m a couple of weeks late but I’ve been busy… sorta.

I really didn’t know where to take her, after scouring the Internet for a local park-and-ride, and ended up going to a local mall with the hopes that they would be closed and the parking lots would be empty.

Seems that there IS a P-N-R around here but Atlantis would be easier to find. It must be just an empty parking lot that stays empty because no one knows where it is except the bus drivers.

“Damn, no passengers again. This location sucks!”

I parked the car, got out, and switched seats with my little girl and let her have the wheel for the first time in her young life. I could tell she was a bit nervous but I assured her that I would show her everything she needed to know and above all, I would not get upset at anything. We would take it slow and everything would be fine.

“DON’T TOUCH THAT!”

I’m such an ass.

I went over the mirrors, the steering wheel, the pedals, and the airbags that would deploy if she careened into oncoming traffic and smashed the car into an exploding fireball.

You know, all the basics.

We practiced her driving and she was a natural; picking up the concept of driving, steering, and applying pressure to the different pedals intuitively. I was so proud of her and made sure I didn’t do anything to make her nervous. Just good old fashioned praise and encouragement.

We mad a few circuits around the parking lot practicing turns, stops, and parking.

And no fireballs so that was good.

We drove home (well, I drove home. She wasn’t THAT good) and I could tell she really enjoyed the lesson. She also said something very similar to what Alex said after I took him two years ago.

“I never realized how complicated it was to drive on the road and I notice so much more now.”

Free Advice for Today: “Carry Handi-Wipes in your glove box.”

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 24th, 2007 at 10:08 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.