“You’re driving like an idiot.”

Dad’s spontaneous, oh so helpful outburst as Matthew slows at a corner to keep the Mazda on four wheels, but treats the stop sign like it’s a green flag at the Indianapolis 500. I had already kept my mouth shut when he stopped on the crosswalk at the first traffic light, when he nearly “got air” over the railroad tracks and when he flew into the video store’s empty parking lot. But the stop sign pushed me over the edge.

We were on our way to Dan’s birthday party and Matt had again asked if he could drive. He always asks, we always say, yes. But after my gentle admonition I thought, always has been less than a week. Sure he drove for two years in our yard, racing from one end and burying the nose of the car in the bushes at the other end, but that is all of a hundred feet. No lights, no other cars.

Diane summed it up after we got home. She said, “What if we had an incompetent child we were teaching to drive? We barely tell him anything and he’s driving.” And that’s what I had to remind myself, that he doesn’t whiz through stop signs or stop on cross walks because he has suddenly became a seasoned Massachusetts driver. He’s a kid learning to drive.

“I’m sorry I yelled at you Matt.” Thinking to myself, how does an idiot drive, anyway?

As I was sitting at my computer thinking about our highway drive home and how accomplished a driver he already is, I saw Matt walking across the front lawn with his friend Joe.

“I got to drive on Route 2. “ he told Joe. I could almost hear the buttons pop.