Some parents (mine included) would rather navigate their way out of the Congo before having to sit helplessly next to their teen as he/she learned how to maneuver the family car into a parallel parking spot.
Teaching your kid to drive can be a scary proposition. Few things are as frightening as allowing an anxious teen to get behind the wheel of your vehicle as you sit petrified in the passenger’s seat. Most moms and dads feebly watch the action through slits in the finger mask they have pasted to their countenances. Others like to do their worrying with eyes wide open… far, far away from the passenger’s seat.
Only, sometimes, distance doesn’t spare them from the pain involved with teen driving lessons. Just ask a mom from Massachusetts.
When Mass. mom’s 17-year-old daughter wanted to learn how to drive she turned to her parents. The teen’s father obliged, while her mom decided that she would spare her sanity and watch her daughter swerve perilously close to objects, run over curbs and slam on the brakes at random intervals, from outside the car.
According to police reports, the driving lesson was going well, until the teen attempted to park the car. Officers say the girl couldn’t figure out which pedal was the brake and which was the gas. The fact that she had a 50/50 chance of getting it right apparently didn’t help, because but she got it wrong, slammed on the gas, and plowed straight into the fence her mom was sitting on.
The mom suffered two broken legs and several cuts, but is said to be on the road to recovery. Meanwhile, police say things could have been much worse.
Ironically, the mom thought she was perched in a safe spot. She told police that she didn’t have the guts to get in the car with her daughter, so she left the instruction to her husband. The girl’s dad, who was seated next to the teen as she gunned the car into her mom’s legs, says he thought an empty movie theater parking lot was the ideal place to conduct his private driver’s ed lesson.
Police disagreed, and slapped the dad, who owned the car, with a ticket for allowing an unlicensed driver to operate the vehicle.
Ouch! Wasn’t the mom’s two broken legs enough punishment for one day?
When it comes to teaching kids how to drive, who takes on the challenge in your family? You, another family member, or would you rather pay a stranger to do it?
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