The power of the car keys
Someone needs to have a little chat with the smarty pants engineers who are designing the self- driving cars of the very near future. These brainiacs may have solved the problem of traffic jams and the stress associated with them, but they haven’t given one thought to the new problem they’re creating for parents.
Sure, being able to read a book while your automatic high-tech car transports you to work sounds relaxing. Putting your children in a pre-programed auto that whisks them to music lessons while you stay home and nibble boiled peanuts and sip Co-Cola from Waterford is a dream come true. But all this talk about taking away the joy of driving is actually a horrible nightmare to 16 year olds, not to mention the parents who have learned that as they hand the keys to the teen, they too are receiving a new key . . . the key to a highly effective form of discipline.
Sassing your elders? Didn’t finish the chores? Low grade in basket weaving class? The new phrase that packs a potent punch is . . . “hand over the keys.”
“No! Anything but the keys! I’ll cut the grass, I’ll do the ironing, I’ll be nice to my little brother, but please don’t take my keys!” The despair to maintain their status as a . . . click HERE to read the rest of the story at AL.com
You are so right!
This newer generation hardly even knows what it is like to actually shift gears to drive!
I’ve heard that when young thieves go to steal a car, if it’s stick-shift, they’ll pass it up. Ha!
And that’s when they are still living at home. Using the car as “leverage” when they take it off to college gives you a whole new level of bargaining power.
College has a whole new set of rules. Geez.