Monday, February 21, 2011

the teen

I don't mention as much about my oldest as I do the other two. So I will share a tale of him now.

Saturday, I took Mr. Cynic out for a driving lesson, not in the high school parking lot, but on actual roads.

I nearly died. The boy panicked as we approached a main road and started veering off to 'pull over' to avoid it by having me drive us back into a subdivision from the main road.

Because we live in a coastal plain, the roadsides here have culverts for flood control. He nearly drove us into one, a near barrel-roll, passenger side - me - first.

I can hit some pretty high notes as a soprano. Never this high, except maybe while I was giving birth to him.

My driving lessons with him do not generally involve screaming, but I had said "Don't!" about seventeen times in quick succession before screaming "Stop!" in an operatic fashion.

Think the Queen of the Night Aria from Mozart's The Magic Flute - without the surrounding tune. Just that flute-like high note near the end.

I suggest when you get to this stage of parenting to take a few more trips around the big parking lot in your area.

Eventually, I got a pretty good laugh from it. After I stopped shaking violently. He's generally a cautious kid, hard to get him to drive over 20mph. I taught his father to drive with him and his brother strapped in toddler and infant seats in the backseat, way back when. So I know I can do this, and survive to tell more tales.


 

2 comments:

  1. brave lady! and funny story. i too am very much in favor of parking lots at that stage. i spent many a parking lot hour with my dad in the passenger seat as i learned to drive on the 1972 pontiac. ah, the good ol days!

    ReplyDelete
  2. haha! thanks! I learned on a 1973 pontiac grand safari station wagon with a 455 V-8!

    ReplyDelete

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