Michael
For the first seven or eight years of Michaela’s life, we did not subscribe to cable, and the only entertainment we played on our 12 inch television screen consisted of Blockbuster videos and the occasional recorded VCR tapes of American Idol that Lisa’s mom would mail up from Alabama because of her growing concern that our kids were being culturally deprived by not knowing who Kelly Clarkson or Adam Lambert were. My idea was that the kids could not miss something they never experienced. I dreamt that the kids would be hunkered down in their rooms transported to exotic places by Jules Verne and Daniel Defoe, their journeys limited only by their imaginations.
What a long slide down the slippery slope since that Super Bowl weekend years ago when I sprang for a whopping 24 inch screen and plugged in cable. “The Bachelor”? Really Michaela? Who watches that contrived nonsense about some two-time loser playing tonsil hockey with 30 women, agonizing over who goes home and who gets a rose? Michaela and my wife, that’s who. So unless I want to sit by myself in the living room reading a book, I have to listen to Nick the nitwit philosophize about whether the third time will be a charm. Thank God, after bedding three of the contestants, one before the show began and two during the climax of the season, he was able to select his soul mate. Now if he can only find his soul.
Ever since my son left for college a couple of years ago, I have been consistently out-numbered whenever there is a vote for a television program. So I am relegated to watching chick flicks like “This is Us” or “Vampire Diaries”. If I try to watch something a little more hard-hitting like NCIS, my wife will boycott the show claiming there is too much violence. And if I turn on “48 Hours” or “20/20” Michaela will storm out of the den horrified that I am so absorbed by these redundant murder mysteries.
On the increasingly rare weekend nights that Michaela graces us with her presence, I crank up the wood stove, and scan the latest movies available “On Demand” while simultaneously checking the “Rotten Tomatoes” rating on my I Phone. Apparently it annoys Michaela that, unlike her, I don’t just pick movies by how cute their title is (how did “Alvin and the Chipmunks, the Squeakquel” work out?) but I have found some real gems that way. It is not my fault you have to read subtitles for most of them.
There is hope for us: last night we watched a Planet Earth Two episode and loved it. It was Mother Nature’s version of “The Bachelor” in which male komodo dragons fight ferociously over their mutual girlfriend until one of the giant lizards is wrestled into submission, the winner earning his rose. Who would have thought that two reptiles slapping each other silly with their tails could restore harmony in the household? And happily, unlike our friend Nick, the Bachelor, these lizards mate for life.
Michaela
Most nights, after we have finished dinner, my family unwinds watching a one hour T.V. show in the living room. This means that we all have to agree upon which On Demand show we will play each evening. You would think that with a social worker and a lawyer as parents, coming to any sort of compromise would be a breeze. You would think wrong. My mother, the tender and loving hand that guides her clients to a middle ground day in and day out, is ruthless. And my dad, a man literally paid to negotiate, is like a toddler fighting over a toy. My mom pulls the “I never get to sit down and watch with you guys; can we please watch something I enjoy this once.” Interesting. After religiously following several seasons of “The Voice” per her request, I would have guessed that we watched it more times than “this once.” Then the whining begins in my other ear, “Mick, I’ve had a very stressful day, I just want to relax.” Well jeez, with this level of exasperation, my advice is to never become a solo-practitioner because if every day is that trying, it can’t be worth it. He just wants to watch “Cool Cool LJ” which, in my father’s language, translates to his favorite cop show, NCIS: Los Angeles, featuring the actor LL Cool J. Really Dad? You could at least make an effort to say the name right.
Now that you have the teams, I’ll give you the play-by-play. Dad’s move first: he waits, silently pouting, until we announce that we will be watching my choice, “The Bachelor” and then he pounces. First complaining, followed by a threat to go to bed, roping mom in for the defensive move. Mom comes in, guns blazing, frustrated that we can’t come to a consensus. First, she yells at dad for not spending time with the family, then it’s my fault, “You knew he was going to do this, let’s just watch his stupid show so he’ll be happy.” Then dad with the assist, “Yeah Mick, come on!” The crowd goes wild: dad wins yet again! This defeat would probably be much more disappointing if my dad wasn’t going to fall asleep any minute.
…4…3…2… “This is The Voice!” Sleep tight daddy.
Michaela
When I walked into school the morning after Donald Trump was announced the President-elect, it was for lack of better words, a crap show. After wading through the hallways of quicksand that seemed to weigh down my peers, I entered the classroom of one of my teachers whom I respect immensely. I sat down in my seat across the room from her, shocked to see that she was crying. She sat like a child, grasping tissues and shaking as the sobs rippled through her body. Then I looked up at the smart board in the front of the classroom. On it, in bold font, was a quote from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. I interpreted it to be an ominous message from a despondent Cassius, who was contemplating his own suicide as a means to escape Caesar’s tyranny.
Really, dad? Why all the hysteria? The problem is not Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, or any of the polarized demographic/social classifications that the media has created to separate us: Hispanics, African Americans, educated whites, uneducated whites, pro-life, pro-choice, gay, straight, pro-guns, anti-guns. The problem in America is that all of these categories have been emphasized so much by the media that we forget we are all Americans. The media loves to stick these labels on us that by definition separate us rather than focusing on things that bring us together as Americans.
However you may have arrived in America, you live in the “Land of the Free.” Americans are blessed to live in a nation as promising and successful as this one. So whether or not your candidate won, we have to embrace the results and be grateful to live in a country where this democratic process is alive. Sure, Donald Trump may not be the most attractive presidential candidate, but the fact of the matter is, in a nation of nearly 325 million people, it is impossible to satisfy everyone.
I am 16 years old. But I know when the day comes and I am the role model, standing in front of a room of children looking for any glimmer of hope in my eyes, I will give it to them. I will not cry because the candidate that I believed was “less corrupt” did not win. I will always be grateful to live in a nation that gets to decide its own fate, even when it is unexpected and disappointing. And the lesson that Julius Caesar will help me teach is: “Now bid me run and I will strive with things impossible.” So please, hold your head up, say the Pledge of Allegiance, and believe it.
Michael
How do I explain this election to Michaela? How is it that the same throngs of middle Americans who voted for President Obama twice just elected a candidate whose campaign was built on promises to undo all of his predecessor’s accomplishments? How was it that a real estate mogul who builds penthouses and exotic golf courses was embraced by a basket of unemployed rust-belters who could afford neither his rent nor his greens fees? How could a crotch-grabbing, Muslim hating, tax-evading, race-mongering bully, who picked a fight with the Pope, get elected to the highest office in the land?
Because when they listened carefully, above the din of his vulgar, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic vitriol, they heard what they wanted to hear: a promise for change. Even if they were afraid to articulate it in public, enough people living in the right electoral swathes of the country wanted the American Dream to work for them again, even if the details of his plan were scant. So these people went into the polling booths, held their noses, and voted for change, terrified about what that change might look like.
Where do we go from here? I would suggest that we do not go where many of our institutions of higher learning have gone. Hampshire College has decided not to fly American flags over their campus because, in the words of the college spokesman, for some of the students, “the flag is a powerful symbol of fear they’ve felt all their lives because they grew up as people of color, never feeling safe.”
Following the election, classes in colleges across the country were cancelled so that grieving students and faculty could come to terms with …oh yeah, the results of an election. If only the wounded veterans who sacrificed arms and legs and their sanity to ensure our blessings of liberty could receive the same immediate mental health treatment afforded to the whining students who have the luxury of nurturing their petty grievances.
I would also suggest we do not go where the media has gone and appears to be going.
Until election night, the Republican candidate was never perceived as a direct threat to the ascendancy of the heir apparent, the one who had been anointed by the media, and for whom the election was a mere formality. Only a homogenous group of liberal, self-inflated elitists could have insulated themselves so fully from the foul mood among so many Americans. For a day after the election, there was much hand-wringing and soul searching, but now the media is back to casting aspersions and finger pointing.
Perhaps the media and other malcontents like Whoopi Goldberg and Smiley Virus (both of whom are still residents of these United States last I checked) should adopt the more conciliatory tone modeled by our current commander-in-chief in accepting and honoring the sanctity of our democratic process.
Despite the freaks at the fringes of both sides of the political spectrum, this is still the best country in the world to call your home. I was reminded of this at a Thanksgiving road race when the National Anthem was being piped out of the speaker with almost no accompaniment. Suddenly the canned recording malfunctioned, and there was one awkward beat of silence. Then 500 voices came alive together, spontaneously. “Oh say does that star spangled banner yet wave, O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.” We looked at one another feeling something I am pretty sure none of us had felt in this election cycle. United.
Michael
My wife, Lisa, had to go out of town on short notice a couple of weeks ago. It was just Mick and me for seven days. I felt a niggling doubt that I hadn’t experienced since we left the hospital 16 years ago with our baby girl when I wondered: “Now what do I do?” How hard could this be, I wondered. Single parents do this 24/7/365.
So on Monday morning I get up at 6 a.m., knock on Mickey’s door, hear her muffled plea for “five more minutes” then brush my teeth, knock on Michaela’s door again, hear her mutter “I’m up” in a husky voice. I shave, rap on the door again, flip on the light in her room and yell: “Michaela Elise!”
“I’m getting up, Dad,” she mumbles, but there is still no movement from behind the door.
It was apparent I had to roll out the big guns. If you don’t get up right now, your boyfriend can’t come over.” A nanosecond later I hear her feet padding across her bedroom. And then, just as predictably as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, Michaela asks, “Dad, can you let T-Bone out for me?” I see the fluffy fury circling around the braided rug in the hallway, like a plane looking for a place to land. I scoop him up to bring him down the stairs, not willing to mop up or pick up one of his premature releases.
About the time I get back inside with T-Bone, Mickey yells downstairs to ask if I can make her a chai and some cinnamon toast which she will undoubtedly leave unfinished in the truck after she disembarks for school. I stumble around the kitchen flipping her bread into the toaster, blending my banana, berries and protein in the Ninja, stepping over our golden retriever who is, as always, camped out in the middle of the kitchen floor. Then I select my suit, tie, shoes and towel so that I can shower after my track workout. I pack my soup, sandwich and apple in a paper bag, just as Michaela flitters past me, a supermodel lithely stepping off the runway in Paris. She stuffs her books in her backpack, grabs her coffee and toast, as she makes a beeline for the door.
“Can you put T-Bone in his kennel?” she asks, slamming the storm door before I can respond. I am just latching the door to the kennel when I hear the horn blasting in the driveway. I fill dishes with water and food when the horn blares again.
I lock the front door and stride across the driveway to the driver’s side of the truck, but Michaela is already behind the wheel, anxious to get in as much practice as possible before she takes her driver’s test in January. I walk around the truck to the passenger side.
“You are going to make me late, Dad,” she snarls.
When we arrive at the rear entrance of the school, I ask her to park in the back lot so that I can run on the track before going into the office. It is the only hole in my schedule today. We get out of the truck, and I walk with her the hundred yards to the track, donned in my shorts, fluorescent green shirt and loud running shoes, as a steady procession of cars passes us. Michaela hangs her head as if it is raining, walking at a brisk pace.
“Do you have an exam this morning?” I ask, wondering why she seems so somber. She grimaces as if to say, “Really, Dad?” But instead, she says: “I KNOW all of these kids!” cutting her eyes over to the line of cars slowly rolling toward the school. “And you’re dressed like a freak show.”
“So I guess a kissing hand is out of the question?” I ask, grabbing her hand and pulling it half way up to my lips before she twists away from me and jogs ahead.
“You’re such a goober, dad.”
An hour and a half in the books, and, yep, I am crushing this Mr. Mom thing.
Michaela
A few weeks ago, my mom went to visit her family in L.A., lower Alabama that is, or the “Redneck Riviera” as my dad likes to call it. With mom away and the boys at college, I was on my own. Technically, I was being “supervised” by my father, but as the week unfolded, it became clear that his supervision was neither super nor sighted: in fact, I felt like I was on a ship being steered by a blind captain. Suffice it to say, the week without mom was a little bumpy.
Recently, in a television show that I like to watch, a woman gifted to her significant other a plant as part of a test to see whether her partner would make a good parent. She was going away for a business trip and wanted to see how well he would and/or could take care of the plant. Based on the way our week went, my mom DEFINITELY should have invested in a daisy or two before starting a family with my dad.
The seven days can be summed up in one symbolic scene: Dad feeding the dog. One night I was sitting at the bar table doing some homework when my dad came in and offered to feed the dogs since I was engrossed in my work. Don’t be fooled, he only made this gesture because he was sucking up after not allowing me to have a friend over because I “had too much work to do.” That was a pretext—the real reason being there wouldn’t be enough time for us to have a “cuddle session” while watching TV later if I didn’t get my work done.
A few minutes after my dad had banged around near the dogs’ bowls, I heard T-Bone whining. A frustrated T-Bone was frantically trying to consume the perfectly-oval-shaped chunk of meat that had been carelessly plopped onto a paper plate and tossed onto the floor. He was futilely pushing the plate across the floor because he couldn’t sink his teeth into the pre-formed hunk of meat.
Really Dad?
T-Bone is a smart dog, but he hasn’t quite mastered the use of the fork and knife. I mean, come on. I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt, by patiently asking: “Dad, did you consider cutting up the food for T-Bone so that he could chew it?” After all, I always mince up the food with a disposable spoon before offering it to my Bobo.
“The dog can’t bite it? Maybe I should have put it in one of my shoes—he rips those apart with no problem.”
I can only imagine what it was like when I was a baby. “What Li, she can’t eat an apple on her own? I see some teeth breaking through her gums. Why doesn’t she use them?”
It’s common sense. If the object of consumption is bigger than the consumer’s head, chances are, they cannot eat it.
Speaking of eating, the meals while mom was away were interesting, to say the least. One night, my dad asked if I wanted “vegetarian Thai curry,” which sounded great. I was puzzled when my dad placed a black plastic container filled with a soupy swirl of chickpeas in front of me. I forced a smile and held my nose so that I could swallow a few bites of the steaming mess.
You’d think that after all of the time my dad spent in postgraduate study, racking up the degrees, he would at least know how to pick out some good microwaveable meals.
Really Dad?
One day during my mom’s absence, my dad bought a cluster of bananas and instead of hanging them on the hook, he skewered one of the bananas through the skin, so that by the next morning all five of the bananas were partially unpeeled, and blackening as a swarm of fruit flies descended upon them.
I realized this was a perfect metaphor for my mom’s place in the family. She is the hook that holds our bunch of bananas together: without her we are unhinged.
I still let my dad think he’s top banana. Sometimes.
Mike Kerin is a lawyer in Milford, and his daughter, Michaela, is a student at Amity High School. In their column, this father and daughter bicker and banter about boys, curfews, homework, stress at school, dress codes, and a host of other issues that represent the jagged edges of adolescence which they must navigate every day, sometimes with humor, sometimes with sarcasm, always with love.
MICHAELA
In the Kerin family, education is paramount. Don’t get me wrong: my parents aren’t the type to put the weight of the world on their children’s backs, expecting perfection and accepting nothing less. However, they do expect that Caelan, Andrew and I will always try our absolute best because as long as we are giving it our all, they can’t be disappointed. (Most of the time). Just to be clear, this article is not meant to make me sound unaware or ungrateful for the life and love provided by my amazing parents. I am beyond thankful that I have a mother and father who believe in me and love to see me prosper in everything that I do. On the other hand, I am not always thankful for what comes with this thirst to watch me succeed. Let me explain.
High school is an extremely strenuous time for teens. My two brothers, now in college, can definitely attest to that. I try REALLY hard to wake up at 5:45 a.m. to get ready for school, only to sit through hours upon hours of classes, and return home at around 3 p.m. This schedule does not include the multitude of extracurriculars which add to the stress and strain of a long academic day. As you can imagine, after these long, difficult days, some CWMH (Chilling With My Homies) time sounds great to me. Unfortunately, it never sounds so good to Pop, which is ironic considering he can’t hear too much these days. “Not on a school night Michaela,” begins his lecture to me on the plethora of reasons why having a friend over is not consistent with my goals and responsibilities: Friends will distract me; I won’t get my work done; I will be up too late; I won’t have time to study. And then he concludes his little pep talk with the “Father knows best” card: “I know you don’t understand this now, but I’m doing it for you. I just want you to be the best student that you can be.” Really Dad? You’re trying to pull a guilt trip on me? I am the queen of puppy dog eyes, but nice try. So, to all of you parents out there who might be thinking that his response is perfectly reasonable, l hope this changes your mind.
Thanks to one of those aforementioned extracurriculars, the debate team at Amity, I have discovered that every claim must have credible justification and/or evidence to be considered “valid.” So if my father’s support for his claim that my friends will distract me from my studies if they visit on school noghts, his argument is, in fact, invalid. I go to school every day with nearly 2,000 of my peers, at least 25 of whom are in each of my classes and according to my dad, that is 25 distractions. But how can that be true? If the very place where I learn is full of friends, then how can he claim that only one of them will derail my ability to focus on studies outside of school? This is especially true when you consider that by being together, my friends and I are capable of working with each other on the homework, which can only increase our understanding. Therefore, his supports are not credible. Boom.
My dad doesn’t seem to have a problem with after-school activities that he thinks look good on my resume. If it’s the debate team, or the justice program, or even track, he will find a way to tear himself away from the Red Sox game to transport me to the North Pole if necessary, which discredits his justification of “being up too late.” Hate to break it to ya Daddio, but whether it’s hanging out with the boy toy or mock trying a court case as part of my Yale Justice Program, the pre-calculus homework will still be waiting for me. The moral of the story is that all I ask is for is a little free time to do my “thang” with the people (besides my family) that I love. You’re cute dad, but sometimes I need a change of scenery.
MICHAEL
I’m not quite sure why Michaela feels so oppressed when I try to enforce our policy of no friends over on school nights. It’s really quite a simple rule: no friends over on weeknights. There, I’ve said it twice now. But anyone who knows Michaela well is aware she will not take no for an answer. The kid is like a jackhammer on steroids, chipping away at you in her relentless quest to change a “no” into a “yes”’ The excuses she comes up with to try to wheedle an exception out of me are as imaginative as they are endless. “Dad, Thursday really is the weekend because it ends with a Y just like Saturday and Sunday.” Or “Dad, James has to come over because I am going to cut his hair for our school pictures tomorrow,” like suddenly she has a barber’s license, and a pair of hedge clippers for this kid’s chia pet hairdo. Or “Can Caroline’s mom drop her off here after horseback riding because her parents have a meeting to go to,” even though I’m pretty sure Caroline’s mom was told it was my idea. One of her favorite ploys is telling me she has this massive project, such as annotating the US Constitution for AP Gov. which will be unyielding to her singular brain, and can only be comprehended if she assembles a gaggle of giggling girls to plumb the depths of such esoteric language as “We the people of the United States, in order to establish a more perfect union…” Whew! That’s impenetrable.
And even if her friends are not physically assembled, she can and most assuredly does summon their electronic presence while she sits at the bar in our kitchen with her laptop illuminated with text, and a box in the upper left-hand corner with a classmate’s live video-stream, a pair of buds wedged between her ears, her notebook and textbook open, a pen in hand as she “face-snatches” with one or more of her classmates. How can she have these “chatter-grams” while simultaneously trying to conjugate verbs in Spanish? Yikes, I’m not even sure if she is taking another year of Spanish, which I thought would look good on her resume and be useful in life, but I’ve learned that kids are like tillers on a sailboat: if you want to steer them to the right, you have to push the rudder to the left—you know, tell them the opposite of what you want them to do. She probably zigged with Spanish because I had suggested she zag. When I glare at her for breaking the spirit of our rule “no friends over on weeknights” she inevitably has an excellent excuse on hand for me—“we have a quiz tomorrow in marine biology, and me and MacKenzie want to divide up the material.” I tell her for the millionth time that it’s “MacKenzie and I” which elicits her annoying hand gesture in which she spreads open the five fingers of her left hand, with the exquisite precision of a conductor, then slowly draws them closed together, while softly shushing me.
Last night she told me that she had gotten back a grade in her AP Gov class in which she was able to use her annotations from the Constitution in an open book test. She explained that the class as a whole had under-performed and the several instructors were trying to determine whether to give a curve because of the atrocious grades. I sensed she was laying the foundation for what was coming next, and could feel the anger begin to darken the edges of my mood. “I got a 47, Dad.” As I let that sink home, hearing my molars clicking in my jaw, I noted that her naughty smile seemed out of place in light of the somber news.. Then she added: “Out of 50. A 94!” Boom indeed. Maybe the I should try twitter-graming with one of my buddies while I write my next brief.
Michael
Every March 2nd I wake up my daughter singing “Happy Birthday.” I also sing to her on March 3rd, the 4th, the 5th, and so on for the next 60 days until it is actually her birthday, on May 2nd. If a friend of hers happens to be staying over during this two month period, there is always a moment of embarrassed confusion that Mickey has to clear up by explaining that it’s not really her birthday; it’s just a weird daddy thing. She probably chalks it up to another reason the Department of Children and Families should pay a visit to our home. But mostly she seems content to smile and play along, enjoying the attention of her extended birthday.
Since this year will be her sweet 16th, there has been an exuberant push to claim the rights and privileges attendant with her coming of age: yes, I mean driving. Because we spend a lot of time up in our cabin in Vermont, both our kids have been lucky enough to hone their driving skills on the lonely dirt roads of Windham where you are more likely to encounter a moose or bear than another vehicle. We had to curtail Michaela’s driving in Vermont for a time after a misadventure one fine February morning when she slid into a snowbank at the edge of the driveway, having been momentarily mesmerized by her own reflection in the rearview mirror. It took a good hour of digging and putting evergreen branches under the tires to finally extricate ourselves from the mound of snow, and with each passing moment of that spectacular morning that we were not carving turns on the mountain, I became a little more perturbed with Michaela. I started to lecture her about keeping her eyes on the road, when Lisa interrupted me to remind me that our daughter was only 10 years old, so I should probably go easy on her.
Now her mantra is for driving lessons whenever we get into the car. I want her to get as much experience under her belt as possible, under all sorts of conditions, before that day when I hand over the keys and she will disappear down the driveway without looking back. We practice driving up at the old airport which is private property, so is not technically against the law. She drives along the dirt tracks that parallel the rings where she has had horse competitions. I wonder how I could have been so nervous when she was in charge of just one horse, when now, she has to control several hundred horses revving under the hood. She practices parking in the lot adjacent to the firehouse, opening her door each time to see how close she came to the white line.
On a quiet Sunday, after we have driven down a deserted cul de sac, completing three point turns, backing into parking spaces, and pulling forward between the two white lines, I drive home. Mickey asks to park the car in the driveway. She pulls up to the garden circumscribed by a border of football-signed rocks. This would have been the end of an uneventful driving lesion, except she lurches forward crunching one of the small boulders against the undercarriage of the car. Michaela is all apologies. I can feel involuntary fasciculation’s rippling across my face as my daddy demeanor is losing an argument to the guy who pays the bills. Or as Michaela likes to say, the “bulldog” look was creeping across my face. “Are you kidding me, Mick?” I ask, the irritation leaking into my voice, her eyebrows furrowing. “But Dad, I didn’t mean to,” her bottom lip quivering, her eyes welling with tears.
I know what’s coming next if I don’t turn this around quickly. I invoke the wisdom of my grandmother, telling her: “Don’t cry over what money can buy,” a phrase I will try to remember a month later when my son totals the same car, but is not injured. Mickey puts the car in reverse, and I pretend not to hear the rending screech of the car being pried off the rock. I will wait till later to run my fingers along the gouge under the bumper. Mickey has her swag back as she rolls down the road again. The waterworks have been averted.
On another lesson, Michaela navigates down a mile-long descent, gathering speed as she goes. I see two things coming up fast—an oncoming dump truck and a garbage bin that the wind has blown about three feet into her lane. My right leg starts twitching as I hunt for a brake pedal that does not exist. “Slow down,” I caution, as I pucker-up the fabric from the seat beneath me. She follows my instruction to a tee, slowing the SUV but holding her line straight into the plastic can which goes flying into the yard from whence it came. On a brighter note, the dump truck speeds by without incident.
Note to myself: perhaps she needs a bit more practice before unleashing her on the highways. Another six years ought to do it. About the same time I tell the orthodontist to take off her braces.
Michaela
No matter what my father claims, my first accident (in a car) was not last year. In fact it was at least six years ago. I was young and small enough that my legs were too short to reach the controls of a vehicle, never mind a Durango truck. My parents had the brilliant idea to allow their child to drive down a snowy, slippery driveway. Of course as one could easily guess, I had not yet mastered my steering skills at age ten, so the two right tires may have drifted slightly off the road into a ditch that was impossible to get out of. But whose fault is that: the innocent little girl who was sitting on her dad’s lap driving; or the irresponsible father who allowed the little girl to drive? Really Dad? Anyway, I have not lived that one down, regardless of the fact that my little mishap has been eclipsed by another, shall we say, reckless driver in the family. *Cough cough* my brother *cough*.
As of right now, my sixteenth birthday is in two days, and if all goes well, I will get my learners’ permit in three days. So recently each of my parents has been individually giving me driving lessons. The first two lessons with my dad did not go so well. I will set the scene for you: Nervous Michaela is worried about driving and redeeming herself in her father’s eyes. We have just finished a nice drive on a dead end street. My dad drove home, and I asked to park the car when we are back in the driveway. My dad stops the car on a dead-end street. I get my seatbelt on, start the car, adjust the mirrors and the seat. I put the car in drive to pull around a small rock wall surrounding the garden in my driveway, we are cruisin’; and then bang. Well technically it wasn’t a bang, more of a high pitched “eeee” but in my dad’s ears it sounded more like the chi-ching of a cash register, back in the days of black and white movies. The bottom of the pristine driver’s side door was a wee bit too close to the rocks and apparently it came in contact with one of them. Woopsies. Even though the Audi A4 now lives at Nino’s Garage, unable to be driven, and NOT because of yours truly, I still reap the consequences of that tiny accident. In the bigger picture, that was just a chip in the fingernail polish. By the time my brother wrecked the rig, there was no finger left, never mind the nail to paint.
Now on to the second driving lesson. This time, we made it out of the driveway and down the hill without any issues, so I was feeling good. My dad is an easy person to drive with in comparison to my mother, who is like an air traffic controller, streaming live, warning me about even the most remote possibility of contact with another vehicle, pedestrian, or in Bethany, horses. My dad is much calmer, tending to point out dangers only when they are imminent, which is usually the style better suited to me. However, I do get anxious when I am driving down a hill, coming around a turn in a rather large vehicle, headed straight for a garbage can placed smack in the middle of my lane, while at the same time a truck is accelerating up the hill and around the turn in the opposite lane and the only instruction I receive is “Slow down.” Naturally, I chose the lane with the garbage can and not the one with the speeding vehicle, and perhaps the Durango may have grazed the rubber container. My dad yelled and then laughed at my mistake; the laughing hurt far worse than the yelling. Maybe if he had been a little more animated about the obstacles ahead, I could have avoided them altogether. Thank you though pops, so funny.
Although some of these lessons did not go perfectly, others did. They served not only as driving lessons but life lessons, time for my dad and me to talk about anything going on in our lives, even things that may have seemed stupid at the time. It’s like that country song about a father and a daughter who go fishing together, “She Thinks We’re Just Fishing.” I know we’re not just driving. I am grateful not only for the mistakes I can make when my dad is in the car, but for the memories that come out of them. And even though in a few months, I will be driving on my own, I might have to get a checkup on my skills every once in a while, dad. Because you know, your advice is always fire, as the kids say these days.
