The Transporter

I did a lot of driving this past weekend. This is not an unusual occurrence. I'm always driving somewhere - it seems like it's always, "Dad, I need to go to the hospital for my dialysis" or "Dad, can you come downtown and bail me out?" Man, get your own rides - do I look like a taxi service! I mean, seriously, wherever someone needs to go in our household, I am inevitably the one who has to get them there. That's what I do. I drive people places. And then I pick them up. (I am equally good at both.) But it's not hard to see why things have ended up like this when you consider the other driving options in our household.

For starters, Jill is not much of a driver, which used to be hard for me to understand. I always thought everyone was like me - so desperate to start driving that they rushed right out on their 16th birthday to get their driver's license, which meant . . . freedom! (And also, car crashes! 3 in my first year driving!) Anyway, I thought everyone was like me until I met Jill. She was 22 when I met her and was perfectly content not EVER having had a driver's license. The city buses were just fine with her, thank you. However, after we started dating, her relative lack of mobility became inconvenient . . . for me . . . so I did what I could to disabuse her of her silly idea that "not driving is cool" and, after a year or so, she relented and obtained a driver's license. Even so, her underlying sentiment about driving remained; that is, Jill did not like driving and, for the most part, does not like it still. It is Jill's general belief that driving - all driving - is very, very dangerous and should be avoided at all costs. (Possibly, this is only as a result of years of driving WITH ME. I've actually heard her say "phew" after we've arrived safely at a particular destination. In that specific case, I certainly didn't feel that those people needed to dive out of the way so dramatically - geez, stay off the sidewalk if you don't want me to hit you!) For the most part, Jill sees every car trip as fraught with peril, with assorted psychopaths, drunkards and criminals - or, really, just people like me - ready to pull out in front of her, cut her off, or hit her head-on.

All of which explains how I ended up becoming the permanent transporter in our family. For as long as we've had our kids, I have been the one - and virtually the only one - who gets the kids from point A to point B. Practices, lessons, school, movies, make-out point . . . there is no shortage of driving that needs to be done in our family. And I am the one who does ALL of it. Jill might as well not have her license still, given the amount of driving she does. But I don't complain . . . to her face . . . that much. To be fair, Jill does plenty of other things while I am off slaving away behind the wheel. After all, if the trade-off is cleaning versus driving, I'll take driving every time. The thing is, I have even come to enjoy my transporter role.

It is truly amazing how much you can learn just from sitting quietly in the driver's seat as your kids and their friends talk in the back. Honestly, sometimes it seems as if they don't even realize I'm there, given the types of things they seem willing to talk about. And I'm not just talking about "who's dating who?" and "where's the party at?" but big stuff, too. For example, would I have know the government was contemplating increasing our troop strength in Iraq if not for the backseat discussion I overheard the other night between 16 and his friend Antwan? I think not. Granted, they were discussing the relative levels of promiscuity of various girls they knew and I was listening to a discussion about Iraq on NPR, but still, you get the point. I LEARN stuff when I drive my kids around. Like where they're going, for example. Which is nice to know.

Anyway, I would have thought that my driving days would be coming to an end soon, but that is clearly not the case. 16 has yet to even take Driver's Ed, which means he's not close to getting his license (and even HE is starting to realize that he simply lacks the discipline required to complete Driver's Ed - can you see why school is such a chore?) So I keep toiling away, driving my kids around town. The good news, however, is that in around 15 years my baby girl will probably be driving on her own, so it's not like this is going to go on forever.