Not in the Driver’s Seat

I am a little bit more gray today. My oldest daughter, you see, has her level one driver’s license. This means I am regularly forced to sit in the passenger seat and turn over a two-ton vehicle to the girl who couldn’t keep track of her first two, possibly three, pairs of glasses.

OK, forced may be too powerful of a word. I mean, I see the light at the end of the tunnel. This time next year, it won’t have to be me that is forced to stay up past 10 p.m. in order to drive to the school and pick up children returning from away games. It won’t be me who has to spend time sitting outside the school waiting for various practices to get out and go around from school building to school building picking up the various children only to find myself at home after 6 p.m. exhausted.

But to get to that point, I need to go through this, and this, isn’t pretty, but it is getting better.

From the passenger seat, I notice that my daughter cannot do two things at once. For instance, she cannot maintain a steady speed and do important things like turn on a blinker or the windshield wipers. Never mind all the times she cannot maintain speed because she wants to do things she doesn’t need to do like turn on the radio or grab a drink.

Another aside: Is it wrong that as soon as she obtained her license, I directed her through a fast food lane? I figured she needed realistic practice, and I was hungry. Her food went cold because she had no idea how to eat and drive. I, however, was enjoying my meal.

When Autumn started driving, she tended to wiggle within her lane. That is, a cop driving behind us would probably strongly suspect she was drunk although she never crossed the yellow or white lines. This is not conducive to relaxed supervision.

She has been driving in good weather and bad. She has been driving on snowy and icy roads. And when her dad takes control of the supervision, he does things like tell her to slam on her breaks despite the ice on the road. I am not that adventurous.

I tend to say, “Slow down,” a lot even if, technically, she isn’t speeding.

I never knew 45 mph could feel so fast! But when a 15-year-old is behind the wheel, it can feel like a rocket shooting into the atmosphere.

I never knew two full car lengths was such a short span of space. When a 15-year-old is behind the wheel, it feels like she is tailgating.

The most exciting (harrowing) moments, however, have happened more recently. I have been letting her drive after dark. It makes it harder for me to see what she is doing as well as what is going on outside our vehicle, and it has ratcheted up my nerves even more.

I also suspect the girl is somehow a descendant of some type of insect because it appears she is attracted to bright lights.

And where do you see bright lights when driving at night? If you guessed “the headlights of the oncoming vehicles,” you would be correct.

That is right! The first time she drove, it felt like she kept making a beeline for those oncoming headlights. It was very disconcerting. In an effort to make it home safely, I made her ride the line — the white line that is. Whenever her right tire even THOUGHT about leaving the white line, I would gasp and yell to force her to steer back to the right and away from the lights.

Also, the girl has not yet mastered the art of turning right in places that have curbs. Before there was snow, this meant the van would rise up a bit and come back down. Now, with snow, however, we are constantly in danger of ending up high centered on a snow bank. She really needs to practice turning right.

Or turning in general. She seems to have two speeds when turning — super fast or stopped. It is always nice when she decides to stop in the middle of the road and just sit there for minutes at a time (OK, probably not minutes but it can feel that way) before turning even when turning right. Some of her turns are scary.

More than once as I sat in the passenger seat, I would get the feeling that I just couldn’t take one more moment of her behind the wheel. I had served my time for the day, and I was done.

But it doesn’t get any better when I am in the driver’s seat. Suddenly, I have a driver’s training instructor sitting next to me.

“Did you stop before the stop sign?” she’ll ask me.

The good news is that this experience is making both of us better drivers. Why just yesterday, she managed to reach over and turn up the music without any swerving within her lane while maintaining a steady speed. Progress.

Editor’s NOTE: Please note that the girl was NOT driving when the picture was taken. The vehicle was in park.