Teenaged Drivers

Put down your coffee cup, swallow that sip of juice. Sit down and brace yourself, I've got news that's going to knock your socks off.

The best drivers on the road, bar none, are between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one.

How do I know this to be true? Not from statistics compiled by the insurance companies or the police department, not from actuarial tables, either. I got it straight from the source.

My teenaged son told me.

With a straight face.

Really.

We must, of course, consider that source. This is a young man who anxiously awaits foul weather and slippery streets because it's more fun to ride his bike at breakneck speeds on ice.

"But a bicycle isn't a car," he insists.

He's right, it isn't. In a car at least there's something between a human body and the street. At this rate we're looking to corner the market on Neosporin and hydrogen peroxide, not to mention getting to know the emergency room personnel on a first name basis before the end of the year.

This is also the young man who scared ten years off my life when he tried to make a right turn at close to 35 mph. That'll teach me to let him drive to work. But he's a teenager with quick reflexes so it couldn't have been his fault. It must have been the brakes. It might have been the speedometer. It could have been that I was making him nervous when I suggested - rather vehemently - that if he didn't slow down he'd never make the turn. He's a teen; he's a good driver. But still - curbs are incredibly unyielding and I suspect that we paid a semester of tuition for our mechanic's oldest child. The front end still creaks like a pair of arthritic knees.

Think he was done? Oh, no. This is the same young adult who backed out of the driveway to park on the street and didn't see the fencepost. After ten years of jumping over it, climbing on it, leaning against it and sitting on it, he didn't realize it was there. It isn't anymore. But he's a new driver and, as such, is a wonderful driver. Who needs a fence anyway? The missing fence gives the yard a much more ‘open' and ‘spacious' feel...doesn't it?

Yes, he's got all the answers. He told me so.

With a straight face.

But - I've got the keys. And I'm hiding them. And then I think I might just keep my middle-aged, conservative, seat belt wearing self at home indefinitely.

It's safer that way.

Really.