Watch your mirrors

Meelyn took her driver's test on Thursday, the one where you have to get in a car with an instructor and drive all over town, pretending that you're not nervous and that you meant to turn on the windshield wipers when you were nervously groping for the turn signal. Because that windshield? It looked dirty all of a sudden.

She passed the written test last summer in driver's ed class, so next month we can go to get her driver's license and all she'll have to do is make sure her hair and makeup look good and be very, very ready when the BMV clerk snaps the picture. Those clerks, bored with taking photograph after photograph every single day, don't care if your picture looks more like a mug shot than your driver's license photo. The last time I got my license photo taken, the clerk barely gave me enough time to stand in front of the curtain before she clicked; consequently, I, not the most photogenic person to begin with, have a wide-eyed, hunted look on my face and a weird piece of hair right in the middle of my forehead. All I need is a sign with numbers on it to hold under my chin to make my mother proud.

So! Meelyn will have her license in a couple of weeks, and a few weeks after that, Kieren will be starting driver's ed; he'll be getting his license in October. Aisling will have driver's ed next summer. Mercy gracious sakes, how these chilren has growed!