Replies

Not having any teens yet, I hope that sooner or later I will be able to trust mine.

I have a grand plan for letting go but you know about the best laid plans of mice and men. You obviously made good choices and your parents knew it. Gotta be a story there about your driving though. lol

I'll never forget taking the family car to a neighboring town to take a friend home after I was told not to leave town. I ran out of gas in neighboring town and guess who I had to call to come get me. Dad never said a word to me that very long ride home. He didn't have to. We laughed about it in later years. Another time he found my sis at a dance she wasn't suppose to be at. She was dancing with her eyes closed and when she opened them there was 6'2 Dad a'la John Wayne standing there instead of her little dance partner.
My Dad didn't need no stinkin' GPS tracker.

Gotta be a story there about your driving though

Actually there is. I started driving three months before my 15th birthday (learners permit). I got my license at 15. I had been driving about three months when I had my first accident. Believe it or not, it was not my fault. It was raining and I was doing well under the speed limit (25 or so in a 35). A guy pulled out in front of me and I slid into him. When the police got there they gave me the ticket because I slid into him. Get the picture here; I was sitting straight in my lane and he still had both lanes of traffic blocked from where he pulled out, making a left onto the road I was on - and I got the ticket. Come to find out he was good friends with the police chief in Brookhaven, MS.

OK, I paid that ticket and my insurance made a jump in price. About two months later, I was in Magnolia , MS and got picked up just for being there. The officer ended up (long story - short) shaking me down for all but 5 dollars of what I had in my pocket (around $30.00 or so), then made me walk back to my car at 1:00am in the morning. Never told me what, if anything I had done, no receipt for my "fine". He told me that if I wanted a receipt I had to wait for the judge (Monday morning).

Then, a few months later I got stopped for running a stop sign. Well, I had stopped, put the car in park, got out and plugged my 8-track player back in, got back in the car, then proceeded from the stop sign. I thought to myself, "no problem - I'll just take this one to court and since I was not guilty the Judge will throw it out." Nothing doing. According to the "officers" "testimony" he watched me drive right through the stop sign forcing him to skid and leave the road to keep from hitting me. Lied through his teeth.

Well I learned my lesson. Unfortunately it was not a good lesson. I lost all respect for the law (at least traffic laws). Since I was going to get tickets anyway, I drove however I pleased. It was a sport for us to drive to Brookhaven and get the police to chase us. They had no chance at all of catching me. I was so arrogant with my driving that I installed a switch that turned off my brake lights. When they would start chasing me I would get a couple of hills between us (at night), turn off my brake lights, quickly turn onto a side road and wait for them to pass me. I would then come up behind them as they were chasing me. It was pretty bad.

The problem was that I was invincible in my own mind. I had no concept of the consequences of my behavior on the other people on the road. The only thing that kept me in line was the potential of getting in trouble with the law. I saw no danger in my driving, it was the other slow "idiots" on the road that were the problem. When I lost respect for the law then there were no rules except just making sure that my parents didn't find out. Had they had a way of knowing, there is no way I would have risked losing my car as I surely would have. My Dad would have simply warned me once, then had my car crushed.

I didn't calm down until after I went into the Air Force, and even still was a pretty aggressive driver until I had children of my own and began to understand the consequences of driving like an idiot.

Cordially,
GE