The boy who turned 16 at the end of October is a newly licensed driver. Remember those posts I wrote about teaching kids to drive? I kept meaning to share an insight that occurred to me near the end of his preparation: the first 10 hours with the kid behind the wheel will be 80% of the work. There's plenty of stuff to teach after that, but most of the time your heart will be comfortably down in your thorax and not fibrillating in your pharynx.
Tonight he was reflecting on his first solo trips in the car. "I'm surprised by the extent of my inner old man tendencies," he said. "I was coming home from my friend's house, thinking how strange it was that no one could tell me what to do, and I thought to myself, 'I am going to drive EXACTLY the speed limit and NO ONE can stop me.' And then tonight I was driving home from karate and there was no good music on the radio. I thought to myself, 'I guess I'd better listen to NPR.'"
With the rest of my evening I am going to work on a dragon mitten for my 10yo. This pattern is more recognizably dragon-ly than the dragon mittens I improvised back when my brand new driver was 11, but I am wistfully certain that the speed with which the recipient races toward adulthood will be just the same.
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