Daddy Turns Over the Keys

           This Sunday is Father's Day, and I should be looking forward to a new tie and a bottle of Aqua Velva Old Spice Daddy Aftershave Cologne.  ("There's something about an Aqua Velva daddy!")  But the truth is that for the first time in my 25 years as a Daddy, I'm dreading Father's Day.  Actually, it's not Father's Day I'm dreading.  It is what is going to happen within a few days after Father's Day.

            I will soon be turning over the car keys to my baby girl, her Royal Highness the Princess, who just turned 16.

            It's been said that there are three eras of fatherhood.  The first era is when you are holding your kids all the time, singing endless choruses of Eensy Weensy Spider.

            The second era is when you are chauffeuring your kids all the time, to school or soccer practice or t-ball games or to the pediatrician or the orthodontist.

            And then after 16 years either in a rocking chair or the driver's seat, you enter the third era, the most awful time of life for a Daddy.  That is the era when you lay awake at midnight praying, "Please, God, let me hear the sound of that car coming back in the driveway!"

            It's been said that every Daddy needs two things: grey hair and hemorrhoids.  The grey hair to make you look distinguished, and the hemorrhoids to make you look concerned.

            I won't comment on the second, but now that my daughter has turned Sweet 16, I definitely have made the transformation from brunette to legally blond.

            My daughter does not yet have her driver's license.  She has her learner's permit.  This means she has not yet soloed, but I have been demoted from Captain Daddy to Co-pilot Daddy.  I am now "right seat" while my daughter sits behind the steering wheel.

            It is not fun being a professor at the Famous Daddies Driving School.  In fact, it is a terrifying experience.  It's like riding the rollercoaster of death at an amusement park called Six Flags Over Daddy.

            In a few days, I'll take my last turbulent flight as Daddy the co-pilot.  Captain Princess and I will drive to the Tennessee Department of Safety Driving Testing Center where she will be given a written exam followed by a "road test" in which she will be required to show her proficiency at, among other things, parallel parking.  It is the same test that I took in 1968, and it's a wonder I passed it, since to this day, I cannot parallel park a car.  I basically use the braille parallel parking method, repeatedly hitting the car in front of me and then the car in back of me until I squeeze in.

            Since the Princess takes after her mother and is a straight A student, I have no doubt that she will pass her driver's test.  And then, for the last time until she drives me to a nursing home in about 20 years, I will sit in the passenger seat as my daughter navigates us through the busy streets of Memphis and safely home.

            And then will come the moment I have dreaded for 16 years.  I will wave goodbye as the Princess pulls out of the driveway.

            The only positive thing I can say about this is that it will be good for my soul, and maybe even my eternal destination.  I'll be constantly reciting the Lord's Prayer, the Prayer of St. Francis, the Serenity Prayer, and a little known blessing in the Book of Common Prayer.  It's called "The Prayer of State Farm", and it goes like this

           May the road rise up to meet you.
           May the wind always be at your back.
           May the sun shine warm upon your face.
           And until we meet again, help Daddy to somehow be able to afford the insurance premiums!