OH MY GOSH!!!! Before I begin our epic driving adventure story of today, I must say this kid is doing amazing! She is up and moving, off pain meds completely, and waiting for the last little bits of her incision to heal so she can swim around in the pool. Her magician surgeon told her that she should be healed up in about a week or week and a half and I would let her know when everything looks good to go. That was about two weeks ago and she has a couple more little spots that need to close up.
She is a little bit of a rule bender and she has been trying to sweet talk me into clearing her for the pool. I keep saying no, because: infection. This little turkey decided to let technicalities work in her favor. She asked if she could at least get her feet wet. Listen, the pool is an above ground pool, which requires climbing a small ladder. There is not a great sitting space for a crippled up post surgery kid to sit safely. With that said, she has been moving around like a rock star, climbing stairs with no problem. I figured, if she could carefully climb the mostly stable ladder, she could sit on the top and dip her feet. She started out like this:
Moved slowly into this:
Moved way too quickly into this:
So as you can see, recovery has been a little better than I expected. She still isn’t able to lift much weight at all and won’t for about 5 months. She is able to bend and twist to loosen up her muscles. So, she is fine. Remember that for this next part. Too many of you are softies and you will want to stick up for her. To those people: Please come take your turn to drive with her.
NOW…
Her magician surgeon told her at her follow up that she can resume driving now that she is off of the narcotics. WHAT! I am sure I was promised at least eight weeks while she would be working her way back to her twisting flexibility, you know, to check blind spots. He was basically downgraded a notch or two in my book, although he is still magical and very much appreciated.
Today, I had to go to town to get food. My family decided that they require it more than once a day and they are getting a little tired of cereal and corn dogs. I felt like being awesome today and I decided to take the girl driving since practice makes permanent and she needs 100 hours. I need to start making better choices.
I would like to take this time to call on my fellow parents of the homebound rejected Drivers Ed students. Please, for the love of all that is holy, let’s put ourselves together a parent driving program. We can take turns risking our lives and we will probably be a little more patient with other people’s children. I will also preface this by saying my teacher filter does not apply while I am unemployed by a legit educational facility.
I should have known the second we hit the side curb of the ditch turning on to the main road from our street that we were in for a bumpy ride. I am trying to give her the benefit of the doubt due to her recent surgery. Maybe she forgot how to drive. Maybe the nerves were so messed up that she can’t feel things or her depth perception is off a little bit. I shrugged it off and we continued.
She had her first lesson on driving through a construction zone. Thank heavens she was at the back of the pack and not at the beginning of it. I hate having to teach her to follow the speed rules while a hundred impatient cars are behind us. We made it through that lesson pretty easily so I asked her if she wanted to take the freeway to town. She was eager and confident that she was ready. Listen…she (I) was not.
As she accelerated onto the freeway, I was coaching her through merging with the traffic, stressing the importance of being aware of upcoming vehicles. Of course, a semi truck was rolling toward us at a quick pace, but I was confident he would allow her to merge by getting over into the VERY empty lane next to us. He didn’t. She learned a valuable lesson on speeding up quickly to avoid being ran off the road.
I planned on having her just stay in the slow lane and we would just take our sweet time getting to town. I have found out that I am a little too impatient for that kind of thing. I saw the semi’s start to slow up the hill and I quickly judged the scenario and decided I would allow her to change lanes. Nobody was coming up on us, or she surely would not have been given the option to try. OMG!!!! HUGE MISTAKE!
Drivers Ed reject parents, take it from me right now…MENTAL NOTE IT…WITH A SHARPIE. Before allowing any lane change to happen, mention to your student driver that it is important to make sure the wheel does not move the opposite direction while they are checking their blind spot.
Taylor looked to the left, the wheel moved to the right, I started screaming like a crazy person as she started drifting off the side of the road. She finished changing lanes and I made her go right back to the slow lane and we travelled the rest of the way to town in that lane, right behind all of the slow semi’s.
I thought our brush with death was behind us. She exited beautifully. We drove down the one way road through town, almost perfectly. I decided to run a couple errands before going to the grocery store, so I directed her back across town to the parkway. This is another busy, much faster, road through town. At this point of parent based drivers education, you just give up taking the safe route and realize sometimes baptism by fire is the only way to teach the tricky roads.
I looked down for FIVE seconds to get something from my console. I looked up to see the kid in the process of running a VERY RED left turn arrow light. She panics and wants to stop mid-turn. I scream at her that she needed to now follow through and keep driving because you can’t stop in the middle of the busy intersection once you have committed to drive right through it. Cars are honking. She is freaking out. I am freaking out. It was a mess. Luckily our next location was just a few blocks away. We switched places because we both needed to get ourselves to a safe space.
After our time out at the grocery store, I felt like she could probably navigate the back roads home. I slapped the magnets of shame on the car and we made our way back to the one way road uptown. Parents, I highly suggest some sort of magnetic warning sign for your car. People tend to be a little more understanding of the crazy driving they are seeing if given a little bit of a warning. I probably should have started the ride out this way.
As Tay was turning onto road out of town, she stopped for a pedestrian and forgot she actually needed to drive out into the road a little further to avoid hitting the curb. I was hoping to repeat the changing lane lesson, this time really drilling in the idea that one must keep the wheel steady. I forgot to mention that you don’t need to slow almost to a stop in order to change lanes. I also forgot to mention that it doesn’t take seven years to change lanes. Commit and drift lady! Commit and drift. I aborted the mission a few times before she successfully switched lanes.
Once we made it to the back roads, the drive home went fairly well.
Drivers Ed reject parents, I have one final tip: When you are unsure if the kid is staying on the inside of the white line, take a little look see in the side mirror. The road behind you will confirm if you are indeed safe from driving off the edge.
I was just wondering how things were going! Obviously, they are great and what a story! lol! Kudos to both of you!