Teen Summer Driving

So how’s your summer going with the kids at home? I actually kind of miss the summers I spent driving my kids all over the place.

These days I have more time to myself but I spend a lot of it worrying when my teens are on the road. Thank goodness many teens these days seem more responsible than previous generations about drinking and driving. Now if we could only get them to realize that driving and cell phones are just as dangerous...

I have one teen with a learner’s permit, which, needless to say, makes a simple trip around the block stressful. Not to mention when she decides to ramp up her learning and take a turn with the stick shift, in which case I get whiplash just going down the driveway...

I have somewhat resolved this dilemma by realizing that, to my surprise, her older siblings make much better teachers than I do. My would be driver takes instruction more easily from her sister and brothers and they have more patience and technical knowhow than I do for sure. Plus they like the same kind of music and all of them would rather drive around doing errands than stay home pretending to do the dishes!

This summer our household also has a couple of teens who drive themselves to work, very capably I might add, but have nowhere to park. So one came home with a golf ball through the rear window and the other was a victim of a fender bender hit and run. Fortunately the former was covered by insurance and the latter was sort of fixed with a hammer, wrench and some spray body paint.

But the most unusual driving memory this summer doesn’t involve the teens at all – it would surely be the huge wild female turkey we had to keep chasing off the roof of the car!
DE August 20 blog