Jesus Take the Wheel

Alison is finally committed to learning how to drive. Thanks be praised and Hallalujah. Kind of.

She'd put it off all year. Mostly because she has two live-in chauffeurs and friends who'll cart her butt pretty much wherever she wants to go. But she's through finals and in between travels. Her summer job is to get her 50 hours of driving in and to get her driver's license before Herron rings the school bell.

She had insisted that only Jeff be her instructor. "Come on, Mom, even you know you're a bad driver," she said.

Even though the Captain wasn't in the room at the time, I could see him nodding his head. I agreed to this madness but found myself with time on my hands this week.

"We're driving today," I said.

"What?" she asked, turning around from where she was recording pluses and minuses on her chalkboard wall that's now consumed with her potential college choices.

"No arguments. You're doing it, and you're doing some of it with me," I said.

I can't remember why we had both cars home, but Jeff wasn't around. We drove through our neighborhood in his automatic transmission Subaru. She was really nervous but she did fine.

So we've been driving pretty much every day. Jeff takes her out, too.

This morning, she was backing out of the driveway and at one point had the Subaru crossways instead of heading to the street. She got it straightened out and declared that other than that one point, it was one of her best exits.

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She was going along fine in traffic as we approached a line of cars at a stoplight. I'd been sitting mostly silently as I thrashed around her twists and turns and choppy stops at stop signs but I apparently squeaked as the Acura in front of us got closer and closer.

"I saw him! I'm stopping fine," she said, glaring at me.

I looked back, a little surprised.

"Did I say that out loud?" I asked.

"Yes," she said.

She drove on, we got home safely and I decided to take a little walk. I meander down the drive and saw the casualties from her driveway exit.

I knocked on the picture window and had her get off the couch to lay witness her destruction.

"Uh, well, they're not all that bad," she said. "And look! Those are OK."

I think I'm going to have her park in the street from now on...