Reed's first drive.

Remember your first time driving? For me, it was behind the wheel of my mom's '70 Impala. (I loved that car... wish I still had it. Along with the teeth I lost when I crashed it into a light pole.) Well, I wanted my son's first time at the helm to be memorable, too, so yesterday, on the last day of our Christmas vacation, we hopped in Barney and drove to El Camino High School, where a big, empty parking lot beckoned!

After some instruction on how to use the various controls ("don't press too hard on the gas", "keep your foot on either the brake or the gas - never away from the pedals", "always put the transmission in 'park' before you set the parking brake"), we swapped positions and I navigated Reed through several roundabouts of the parking lot, being careful to give a wide berth to the single light pole in our vicinity :) We talked about how steering while the car was in motion, no matter how slight, was so much easier than trying to muscle the wheel around while parked. I explained what the gauges' normal range was, and what to do if they left that range. I told him that small control inputs were much better than large ones; a warning he found to be true through slightly over-anxious applications of gas and throttle. And when we were done, we swapped seats and drove home, but not before I got the picture below. The smile says it all :)