Musings at Altitude

Everyone who lives in Colorado should be very afraid now.  My 15 year old is now officially learning how to drive and within a couple of months she’ll be out on the roads. 

Her excitement to be driving is obvious, but before she gets to flaunt her skills (or lack thereof right now), she has to be tutored and then tested by the best Driver’s Ed teacher of all time.

Denise has an incredible skill and patience for teaching our kids to drive.  I’ve tried a couple times and ended up screaming at the kids or putting my head between my knees in preparation for the inevitable crash.  Neither was conducive to helping the kids learn, and the training was quickly taken back by my wife before either the kids or I was injured from the driving or the smacks that would eventually occur back and forth.

So I got to watch closely today while the student was trained by the master.  In fact, I probably learned a few things that I need to pay attention to as well!  I was once again amazed at the patience and very nurturing style of teaching that Denise provided, and I was even more impressed with the way in which my 15 year old responded to the teaching and accepted the feedback, even when she was doing things wrong!

But I must admit, I feel sorry for my car!  She has over 217,000 miles on her now, and though still in really good shape, she’s the obvious choice for the “training car” since we have the least to lose if for some reason my daughter freaks out and wrecks the car.  As the training vehicle of choice, she’s going to have to live with the brake checks, slams into the curbs, rapid acceleration, and 18 tries in a very short period of time to put her into a parking spot.  Fortunately, she’s an automatic, so she won’t have to experience the grinded gears or the stalls!

But back to my daughter.  She’s most certainly excited about driving, but I’m not very excited for her to be driving!  Though I got my permit when I was 14 and had my license at 15, she still seems way too young to be driving, and I can’t even come close to imagining me driving way back then when I was 14!

We’ll struggle through this though, with me cowering in the back seat taking pot shots at the student driver, and my wife sitting up in the co-pilot seat being the nurturing and supportive trainer that she always is.  And my 15 year old will continue to ignore me just like she has most of her life and focus on the one person that has the “pass or fail” determination for when she moves from the parking lot to the roads and then ultimately from the roads to the status of “licensed driver”.