Mom's Driver's Ed

Had a baby? Ready to head out in the auto with your little bundle? Not so fast. There is an entire set of lesson you need to learn before you can hit the road.

This is Mom’s Driver’s Ed.

Lesson 1 – Develop the ability to drive without actually looking in the direction you are going. Once, you drove with your eyes focused squarely ahead. Forget that. Now you will occasionally flick your peepers to the road ahead, while trying to maintain a constant visual on your newborn using a complicated system of mirrors placed strategically around your vehicle. This skill will come in handy in the childhood years and you have to mediate fights, via rearview mirror, over Burger King toys and who is touching whom. You will also develop a “look” you can throw at that same rearview mirror that allows you to stop any illegal activity dead in its tracks.

Lesson 2 – Develop extreme flexibility. As your child grows and becomes able to eject the essential pacifier, resulting in crying that causes you to swerve, practically into ongoing traffic, you will find yourself blessed with the same super power as the mother in The Incredibles – elastic arms. Did you ever think you would be able to reach a two inch piece of plastic, lodged under the passenger-side backseat while making a left turn? Apparently, along with stretch marks and sagging breasts, delivering a child also leaves you with the upper body flexibility of a Chinese contortionist.

Lesson 3 – Develop the aim of LeBron James. After the pacifier phase mentioned above ends, your child will still have items he or she can not reach, but needs with the desperation of a junkie looking for a fix. And as the number of children you are carting around every day increases, so will their distance from you in the cabin of your vehicle, and the number of requests for food and liquids. If my ability to land a Ziploc baggie of Goldfish, or a Thomas train, in my kid’s lap, in the back row of the van, is any indication, there’s a half-court three point contest somewhere I am going to win.

Lesson 4 - Develop the driving skills of Mario Andretti. Everyone assumes it’s teenagers who are the most dangerous drivers on the road, when really it’s mothers of young children. While we are not drag racing in the Stop N Shop parking lot on a Saturday night, we are doing fifty in a thirty-five mile per hour zone, trying to make the ten o’clock pediatrician appointment because our kid spit up all over our clothes, requiring a full outfit change (not wanting to go out looking like contestants in a breastmilk wet t-shirt contest), or to get to preschool pick up before having to turn back around and race to the elementary school for library duty. In the car the other day, I was explaining to LM yellow lights mean slow down in preparation for the red light, when #2 quips, “Then why do you always go faster, Mommy?” Guess I didn’t have those flames on the old van for nothing.

Final exam - Once you have mastered all these skills, you will be tested. You will have to feed, soothe, and yell at your children, explain the concept of hell*, drink a hot cup of coffee, and try to eat a yogurt at stop lights, compose a list for your Target run in your head, all while twitching desperately to pick up your Blackberry and return that email from the soccer coach, since driving in the car is the only time you are still enough to actually have a coherent thought.

And don’t kill any other drivers.

Mothers, start your engines.

*No joke. An innocent question from #2 about why we say “God bless you” when someone sneezes followed a meandering path, ending in my explaining the concept of hell. After which she paused and said< “How did we get here from sneezes, again?”