Never too late

I'm really not terrified of growing older. I'm not. It's a little stressful to think of all I have yet to accomplish, but I'm not scared that I won't do it. There's always time if you really WANT to do something. Case in point was my grandmother's--brought to my attention last weekend at Thanksgiving Dinner.

    "Hey, you have the car, right?" she asks me.
    "Hmm? Yes, yes I have the car."
    "Okay good. Take me driving."
    "Take you for a drive? Where?"
    "No, I drive."
    "Yes I do. I want to. I've done it before."

Huh?

My eighty-two year old grandmother apparently had her first driving lesson a few weeks ago when my mother let her drive my car (the only automatic one in the family...not by choice!) down a rarely used street. Apparently the driving lesson was brief but eyeopening to my grandmother who's never put the thought into how driving actually happens.

    "Okay, down at your feet are two pedals--see them?" my mother instructs my grandmother.
    "Yup, I see them, but there are three, not two." my grandmother, intrigued, studies the machinery at her feet
    "That left one doesn't do anything. It's a foot rest."
    "Oh, it is!"
    "Okay, practice stepping on them. The right one gives power, the left one stops."
    "Okay, I see them, and I can step on them." Grandmother stomps on the pedals enthusiastically.
    "Do you know where the pedals are?"
    "Of course I know where they are! They're right here!" Grandmother watches herself work the pedals.
    "Okay good, but you really have to know where they are because you can't look for them, you have to watch the road!"
    "Oh!"

Needless to say, both of them lived to tell the story, and now my grandmother is just itching to do it again.