Lessons learned

About a month ago, I became the parent of a teen driver. A few near heart attacks later and I think my son is starting to get slightly less terrifying behind the wheel.

He wants a motorcycle of course, and in the innocence of youth, doesn't quite understand the costs involved. His dream is a sportbike:

The reality will be a 50cc scooter to start, then when he gets the money, he can buy himself a bigger bike.

As for the driving, he's doing pretty well so far. There's still plenty of room for improvement, but I'm screaming in terror a little less often. Tonight, he learned an important lesson about road debris. While we were driving down Manheim Pike toward home, a large piece of plastic somehow came up off the road and hit the side view mirror.

It was a battery cover from something or other; I can only assume a boat of some sort. In any case, something like this is startling enough when it hits a car, but for someone on a bike, it could cause a lot of trouble.

On a bike or scooter, as any experienced motorcyclist will know, hitting road debris can have disastrous results. This gave us a bit of a teachable moment about the dangers of stuff in the roads. The battery cover seems harmless enough, being lightweight plastic, but it made a surprisingly big scratch on the plastic mirror cover and would have hurt horribly if it hit an unprotected or lightly protected body part.

So, my son has learned a lot in the last month of driving...and I'm starting to find more white hairs every day.