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I am not famous for my driving prowess. I compensate by being quite cautious, knowing my limits, and sticking mainly to driving places that I have been many, many times before. It seems to have worked pretty well so far. In my ten years of driving, I have never had a traffic ticket or been in an accident where I was at fault. I do not speed. But look what my daughter is turning in for homework! She wrote this for a school assignment in which she was supposed to reflect on what it had been like to pretend to be a 1950′s child for a week (no television, no wearing of pants, yes to eating dinner with the family every night, yes to daily outdoor chores, etc.) One of the Time Swap requirements was not to drive anywhere over forty miles an hour. She reported the following:
Even though we usually go at least a little faster than forty miles per hour, I actually got places faster. When we are going faster than forty miles per hour, there is less time to think through where we are going to go, and how to get there, so it is much more probable that we will miss a turn someplace, and it will take longer to get home. When we are going fast, the driver of the car has to concentrate, and so we cannot talk as much, because if we do, than whoever is driving the car, cannot concentrate and makes a wrong turn. But because this week we had to go slower, there were less wrong turns, so we got places faster. Then, because there was much less prospect of making a wrong turn, we talked together much more in the car this week, and had fun, because we made jokes, laughed, talked, got to know each other more, and had meaningful conversations together.
Do you ever wish you could include a rebuttal with your child’s homework?
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4 Responses to “Could I be that bad?”
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Hee hee! Leave it to kids to notice–and exaggerate–our own personal quirks. I love how she turned it into a positive, though–how she enjoyed having more meaningful conversations in the car with you because you weren’t making SO many wrong turns, etc.
My cousin Jacob Cheever also lives in Orem and is in 5th grade. His mom mentioned only driving 40 miles per hour on facebook last week for a school project. Could he be in your daughter’s class?
Angela–Wow! Small world. Jacob is in her class. That’s amazing.
Robin–Yes, she also had heartwarming things to say about dictating her journal to me (because she wasn’t allowed to use the computer as part of being in the 50s). I was starting to be sucked in — who wouldn’t love reading a daughter’s reminiscence of all the joy and laughter she shared while talking over journal entries with her mom–and I almost started thinking I might be a cool, funny mom–when I read the section about driving which was pretty similar, except about driving!
Just for the record, there is no speed limit higher than 40 on the way to school or to swimming (the two main places Amelia goes). I imagine I may often drive 42, but I wasn’t going much slower than that last week.
I think the funniest thing about this is that when I was laughing about the essay and asked Amelia about it, she said, “What? It wasn’t supposed to be funny!” She believes it’s all true! This morning, thinking about her essay (and our differing viewpoints) further, I figured out that what she wrote may be closer to a reflection of driving with me on the way home from school v. driving with me on the freeway (as opposed to driving with me last week vs. driving with me every other week-which is pretty much the same).