The Laugh my Son gave me as a Teenage Driver

He waited until he was 18 to get his license, for which I was thankful. The more mature he was, the safer his driving habits would be, at least that's what I hoped. I had been out with him a few times driving, but I was always nervous. It wasn't necessarily his fault....I think it was me, mostly from being a mom. You know, mom always knows best. I'd notice every little thing he did, which was different from what I would do. I would make sure to point it out and I know it drove him nuts!!

I'm sure I drove him crazy and much as he drove me crazy! Most times, I think, he didn't really want me in the car with him while he was driving. Can't say that I blamed him :)

My son had been driving for a month with his new drivers license. On this one particular day, I'm sure he was glad I was with him.

He was driving us to Walmart, which was only a few miles down the road. He was doing good with his driving, no problems yet. Then he started approaching a yellow light, which for many new drivers, can be confusing. Do you speed up and go through it? Do you stop and wait for the red light? His ambiguous thoughts had shown through with his driving. He'd step on the brake, then go, back to the brake, then finally started to go through the yellow light.

Here came the problem, when he finally decided to go through the yellow light, unbeknownst to him or me, the light changed to red.

As he drove, he kept looking in his rear view mirror. I'm sitting in the front passenger seat watching him. I kept thinking to myself, "what is he looking at?". Well, I found out. I looked out my side-view mirror and saw a police car behind us with it's lights blazing!!

At the same time, I noticed our car was picking up speed! I looked at my son and said "what are you doing, you need to pull over, there's a cop behind us with his lights on, pull over". He told me, "no, I think he (the police) wants me to speed up". I was dumbfounded! I yelled "pull over, pull over, pull over!!!". My son said "where?" I yelled "right there!", as I pointed in the direction I wanted my son to go.

Thank goodness my son listened to me and pulled over right away.

We sat in the car waiting to see if the officer was going to pass us or pull over. Sadly, he pulled over too.

As the officer was approaching our car, I was laughing hysterically! My son rolled his window down to speak to the officer, in the meantime, I'm leaning across my son, laughing...and I proceeded to tell the officer that my son had his license for only a month, and my son thought the patrol car's lights were on because he (the officer) wanted my son to speed up.

The officer, with a smile on his face, said "son, we would never want you to speed up".

Needless to say, I was laughing all the way home and couldn't wait to tell family and friends! As I retold the story, my family was laughing and we were all joking about what could have happened if I wasn't with him. We were saying: "it could have turned into a high speed chase, with other police joining in on the chase", "my son would have been totally oblivious to what was going on, while there's a line of police cars behind him and choppers overhead" All the while, we are laughing hysterically!

He took a lot of ribbing about it, but he's a good sport. While all of us were laughing and talking about what could have happened....he listened, but with a smile on his face.

It was a lesson well learned for him, plus he has a story he can tell his grand kids one day :)

Copyright 2011 by Theresa Shields, Author, Editor, Publisher and Text, All Rights Reserved 7/02/11