Beware of the.....

     Recently, Lindsay got her learners permit for driving. Like most teens, she was excited and anxious to begin her lessons. You can see her first experience that I wrote about here.

     What I didn't mention in that post was Lindsay had a bit of an unnerving first few moments courtesy of someone from our neighborhood. Since the cemetery was literally around the corner from us, I let Lindsay drive from our house. John and I usually start our driving lessons getting familiar with steering, braking, accelerating in places that aren't busy before tackling the streets with all the traffic.

    So, Lindsay had to backup from our driveway on to our road. She took her time and waited until it looked very clear. No problem, I totally understand that. This being her first time ever driving a car, let alone backing up, she was going slower than the average driver. Of course as she was in the process of backing up, another car approached from behind and another was coming towards us up the street. After about 5 seconds, the guy behind us lays heavily on his horn in frustration with Lindsay. My poor girl! She got a bit flustered, but recovered very well and we had a great rest of the lesson.

     In thinking to maybe prevent jerks like my neighbor from doing this again, I thought about making a sign as a courtesy warning that a student driver was at the wheel and place it in the back window. I talked over my idea with some of my friends to get feedback and several thought it was a great idea and said they would be kinder and more patient if they saw a student driver sign on a nearby car on the streets. Another had the suggestion that there were probably magnetic signs for this purpose. Ureka! I went to Amazon and found several options and ordered one.

     When it arrived, I explained to Lindsay that I wasn't trying to embarrass her by having the sign, just trying to get people to hopefully act more civilized. She understood and thanked me for getting it. Good news is we will get double use out of this as Courtney will be a driving in about 1.5 years when she turns 15, so while the sign wasn't expensive, around $7, it's even a better deal getting twice the use out of it. So if you see one of these out on the streets, please remember how you felt when you were learning to drive and ease up on the road rage a bit, ok?