{"id":482,"date":"2017-04-13T20:45:19","date_gmt":"2017-04-13T20:45:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/?p=482"},"modified":"2017-04-13T20:45:19","modified_gmt":"2017-04-13T20:45:19","slug":"driving-miss-brenda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/archives\/482","title":{"rendered":"Driving Miss Brenda"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Have you seen the movie <em>Driving Miss Daisy<\/em>? It\u2019s about an 80-year-old woman who should probably hand over her car keys, yet <em>really<\/em> doesn\u2019t want to give up the feeling of independence that comes from driving her Hudson Commodore sedan into a ditch. Backwards.<\/p>\n<p>Her son\u2014afraid that his mother\u2019s car is going to turn into a 4,000 pound steel coffin<!--more-->\u2014hires a chauffeur to protect her from her own driving.<\/p>\n<p>I loved <em>Driving Miss Daisy<\/em>. First of all, because Morgan Freeman was the chauffeur. I\u2019d watch a documentary about cardboard if Morgan Freeman was in it. But mostly I loved that movie because I want to <em>become<\/em> Miss Daisy. Now, I\u2019m not saying I want to become crabby and difficult when I don\u2019t get my way (I\u2019ve already mastered that). I\u2019m saying that, when I\u2019m older, I want someone to take away my car keys and insist on chauffeuring me everywhere.<\/p>\n<p>My driving is already stunningly mediocre, and I have no reason to believe that\u2019s going to change. I still can\u2019t parallel park, I\u2019ve knocked off two side mirrors\u2014<em>both<\/em> times while trying to get out of underground parking garages\u2014and I once accidentally backed into a Mack truck.<\/p>\n<p>So here\u2019s my plan: I\u2019m going to try to make my current car last until I\u2019m 80. I\u2019m 53 and only drive twice each week, so that should be doable, right? Then, when I\u2019m 80, I\u2019m going to start doing things that will worry my kids\u2014like working on Sudoku puzzles when I\u2019m sitting at red lights, taking shortcuts across people\u2019s lawns and maybe even singing with the windows down. They\u2019ll be so convinced that I\u2019m a public health hazard that they\u2019ll take away my car (which should be pretty much composted by then, anyway) and will start driving me everywhere I want to go. I think this plan is perfect\u2014don\u2019t tell my kids.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Have you seen the movie Driving Miss Daisy? It\u2019s about an 80-year-old woman who should probably hand over her car keys, yet really doesn\u2019t want to give up the feeling of independence that comes from driving her Hudson Commodore sedan into a ditch. Backwards. Her son\u2014afraid that his mother\u2019s car is going to turn into [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-funny-bits"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=482"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":484,"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482\/revisions\/484"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}