Riding the Roads

Kate has been strongly hinting (okay, outright begging and pleading) for Driver's Ed classes. She's 15 and itching to be mobile. I have never personally been in the car with her, but my wonderful hubby and my dad have let her drive a few times in controlled situations. So last night, as we are pulling to our driveway, she asks if she can drive me around the block. Taking both of us totally by surprise, I said okay, pulled over and let her behind the wheel. This is when hilarity ensued.

First, she took at least 2-3 minutes to very carefully adjust her seat. And the mirror. And the seat again. Then the side mirror. Then she looked at me expectantly and I said, "Wagons Ho!!" I got the withering teenage look for my trouble and we were off. At 5 miles an hour. On the left hand side of the road. I laughed a little and told her she should probably get back on the right side and she willingly obliged. As we came to the "U" part of our street, we saw one of our neighbors standing in the road talking to another neighbor. As we're creeping around the curve (3 miles an hour for the turn), I plaster my face to the passenger side window, mouth "help me" and start beating my chest. They are laughing so hard that even Kate begins to laugh. We get all the way around to the entrance of our driveway again and I had her stop and told her to turn on her left turn signal. At that point she panics a little and says, "Oh, I don't know how to do that," and I tell her to just push the little stick on the left side of the wheel. So she begins to switch the stick up and down and up and down to make it blink. At that I totally lost it and began to laugh hysterically. I told her that these new-fangled blinkers were automatic and she only had to push it down once for it to blink.

I told her she could go around one more time and so she increased her speed to nearly 10 miles per hour (woo doggies!!) and as we get the curve again, Mr. Neighbors are grinning and ready for us. In unison, they take a HUGE step off the road into the lawn and cover their eyes. It was the funniest thing I have ever seen. We made it safely home where Kate declared that it was fun driving with me, more than she expected.