Thanks to the Dads

If you'll permit me, I'm going to wax a little personal and perhaps even sentimental.  Over Father's Day weekend, my family swapped a lot of "Dad" stories.  I had to laugh at the number that involved the misadventures of teaching three teenage daughters to drive. 

My dad took each of my older siblings to a local church parking lot with for driving lessons and brought me along a little moral support.  (I'm the youngest, and apparently the most reckless.) I generously tasked myself with inventing with the best "real world" driving scenarios!  Hey! Let's pretend there's a cow in the road... What should you do?  Whiplash and hollering ensued, but my dad stayed as calm as any father of a 16-year old standing on the breaks of a 1984 Buick Century could. Apparently, lesson unlearned, I accompanied sister number two on her parking lot lessons.  There, I kindly invented a scenario in which backing up alllll the way around the building was necessary.  As we sped toward the building... up over the curb and on to the grass.... and narrowly missed an oncoming tree, my dad very calmly said, "Brake.... brake... brake....BRAKE!"  It's a wonder he didn't have a heart attack on the spot.  (I was later banned from further ride-alongs.)   And I well remember flying off the road and sliding past a chain link fence before coming to a stop as my dad calmly said, "Turn here... Yes, here... You have to TURN!!!"  My dad never really got mad at our youthful incompetence, but he sure took the wheel in a hurry when danger was immanent.   

I can't imagine the dread he must have felt turning each of his daughters loose behind the wheel of a car.  But, to his credit, we were always well prepared with the necessary road skills.  He's a Wyoming-bred boy, so we learned the ins and outs of proper snow driving (some of us more successfully than others...), we were taught to be handy with a jack, but we were also armed with phone numbers for towing services, and we learned to check our own oil and how to identify leaked car fluids.  My dad was determined to raise car-capable daughters and he succeeded.  (I've even had to teach a boyfriend or two some basic car maintenance.) But maybe the best thing my dad ever taught us was that no matter what happened, he'd always be there for us.  My sisters and I have totaled our fair share of teenage junkers, wrapped his pride and joy red pick-up truck around a pole, and STILL not mastered the art of driving out of a spin on the ice (I'm red-faced here!), but on that inevitable call home, we could always bank on my dad coming to the rescue.   

So here's to all the dads who taught their kids to drive, changed a host of tires, brought gas cans to the sides of roads in the middle of the night, and pretended the dent just wasn't that big of a deal.   Your kids salute you and Ken Garff Honda of Orem does, too.