My M-I-L Failed her Driving Test

[milee]

You didn't offend me one little bit. Of course drunk driving is totally unacceptable, but I blame the other sober adults for the whole thing. Alcoholics are notoriously unaware of their incapacity.  And she was totally alcoholic and totally fabulous.  I still miss her.

And it is a funny story (wouldn't be if anyone was hurt) and we laugh about it mainly because we can still picture the look on each other's face.   ===>   

[happyhoix]

And it is a funny story (wouldn't be if anyone was hurt) and we laugh about it mainly because we can still picture the look on each other's face. ===>

We have our own version of that story - my grandpa started to get to be a horrible driver as he aged. He was in his mid seventies when he stopped paying attention to the road and started sight seeing while driving. And forgetting to look both ways when he pulled out of a parking lot into traffic. Completely oblivious to honking horns, or maybe he was hard of hearing as well as nearly blind?

Once, we were driving someplace with two cars, my mom and grandma and little sister in our car, and grandpa and my dad with me in the backseat of my grandpa's old boat of a station wagon. We're traveling at a high rate of speed down the road and Grandpa is studying the rows of mobile homes in a new mobile home park along the highway. He does not realize that there is a stop light ahead, or that the light is red, or that my mother, grandmother and sister are all now stopped at that red light directly ahead of us. We continue to rocket down the road at warp speed, grandpa still studying the scenery, until my dad grabbed the dashboard and said "DAD!"

Grandpa looked ahead, saw that he was about to barrel into the back of a car full of his loved ones, and suddenly whipped the steering wheel to the right, driving his car up onto the sidewalk, so that we came to rest parallel to my MOm's car, only on the opposite side of the street light, sitting on the sidewalk.

Grandpa acted like nothing at all out of the ordinary took place. I looked over at my little sister, who just survived a firey death, and she was like         So was mom. So, I'm sure, was I. Mom told me later Grandma looked over, saw Grandpa's car sitting next to her, up on the sidewalk, and said "OH look, there's Alfred."
 
After that, no more rides in Grandpa's car. Fortunately, he stopped driving shortly after. I don't know if my dad stopped him, or if Grandpa got his liscense suspended - both are excellent possibilities.