Look, if the guy in front of me is driving slowly, there's not much I can do, so stop tailgating me

This happens to me all the time on my drive to work. I take mainly one-lane (each way) side streets, most of which have posted speed limits of 35MPH and on which the majority of drivers do about 40, maybe a tad faster.

The system works well for everyone involved until one person decides to go under 30, even on the driest, clearest day when driving conditions are optimal.

A line of cars quickly forms behind them, but they are insistent on proceeding well under the speed limit.

Not the worst thing in the world, but admittedly a tad annoying.

Quite often I will be the car directly behind the offending dawdler. I will move a bit to the side so the other drivers can see what's going on, and to convey the message, "Hey, it's not me, it's that guy. What are ya gonna do?"

Yet even when I do this, the car behind me will often position itself about 6 inches from my back bumper, as if tailgating me is going to make Slow Poke Rodriguez speed up.

Why? Why would anyone do this? What do you think you're accomplishing riding my butt when I have absolutely no control over the speed we're going?

Back. Off.

I hate to generalize here, but almost every time this happens, I will look in my rear view mirror and notice that the driver behind me is a young person.

Pardon my old man ranting, but what exactly are they teaching these kids in driving school?

Ease up on the gas pedal, Sophia, and put some more distance between you and me. You're accomplishing nothing.

You know, most of the time my blog posts are meant to convey something funny, touching or otherwise positive. It's not often I complain, or at least not often I end with a complaint.

But that's all I have today, along with the following bit of advice:

If you're someone who does this, stop it.

Yes, I'm looking at you, Liam. You're not getting to first-period Biology any faster by rear ending me.

The three things I've told each of my kids the first time they got into the driver's seat

Our youngest child, Jack, recently got his temporary driver's permit. We have been down this road four times before, and each time, it has fallen to me to guide the kids through the early stages of the driver education process.

Considering the number of cars that have been totaled by our family, you could argue that perhaps I am not the world's greatest driving instructor. However, I stand by what I've told each of the kids the moment they've sat down behind the wheel and before they're allowed to drive even an inch:

(1) You could kill someone with this machine

Yeah, it's a little harsh, but you absolutely have to understand the power, responsibility and potential to change lives (your own and others) every time you're on the road. You're suddenly in charge of a ton or two of steel and glass that could maim or murder other human beings. I don't want you to be tight and nervous every time you drive, but I also want you to be constantly alert and aware of the consequences of not paying attention.

(2) Be patient...this takes a little time

Some people are just natural drivers and they understand the rules of the road and the nuances of maneuverability instinctively. Most of us, however, are not like that. There's a reason they want 50+ hours of on-the-road experience before you take your test. It takes that long even to start to feel truly comfortable and competent as a driver.

(3) There are no dumb questions

Ask me anything. It may seem like your friends already know this stuff, and you may feel stupid, but you should absolutely ask if you don't understand something about the rules of driving, road signs, which buttons and levers do what in your car, etc. Don't be embarrassed. ASK.

Jack knows the pressure is on him to become the first of our kids not to get into an accident within a couple of years of obtaining their license. I'm confident he can do it.

The top 5 things I do on my 42-minute morning commute

(1) Listen to audiobooks
I recently finished "A Short History of World War I" and "A Short History of World War II," which are a combined 27 CDs long. They make me wonder how exactly Professor James L. Stokesbury, the author, defined "short." Clearly it has never bothered me, though, as by my estimate it was (and this is no exaggeration) somewhere between the 25th and 30th time I've listened through these books in their entirety since I first started getting them out of the library in the mid-90s. Back then I would get them on cassette, so that gives you an idea of how ancient my tie to these works is.

(2) Chew gum
Wrigley's Peppermint Cobalt 5. I go through 2-3 sticks a day, which as bad habits go is probably pretty low on the scale of badness.

(3) Dodge the insane drivers of Interstate 271 and Ohio Route 8.
We have covered this before. The good thing is that I now know exactly how I'll die. I will inevitably be rear-ended by someone who feels I should be doing 85 MPH in the far right lane. It's just a matter of when.

(4) Think about my meeting schedule for the day
I am not the biggest fan of corporate meetings. My former colleague Debbie Thornsberry said I always had The Meeting Face during meetings, which shows that even with great effort we sometimes cannot hide our true feelings. I understand the necessity of getting together with co-workers, but I quickly found out there's a good reason employees have dubbed it The Goodyear Tire and Meeting Company.

(5) Constantly make sure I have my ID badge, my phone, and my lunch
I have been known to forget one or more of these things on a given work day, and it always creates a big hassle when I do. So I look around, feel my pockets, and just generally do everything to make sure I have these essential items with me. It causes way more stress than it should.

I am perhaps not the long-distance driver I once was

Over the years, Terry and I have often talked about doing a two-week family road trip out west with the kids. The kind of thing where you cover, like, 3,000 miles over the course of 14 days and hit some of the biggest landmarks on the other side of the Mississippi.

We still talk about doing it with whomever in our family can come, but now I’m not so sure.

We recently drove from Wickliffe to Orlando, a distance of about 1,000 miles. And that was more than enough driving for me, thank you very much.

I discovered my tolerance for long-distance driving has diminished somewhat. This could just be reflective of the fact that I hadn’t done a truly long car trip in a while.

Or it may be that I’m getting old.

Either way, by the end of the second day (we did it over two days), I would much rather have walked those thousand miles than spend one more hour in the driver’s seat. We had to bring two cars, as we were taking Melanie for her 5½-month Disney College Program experience and she’ll need her own transportation while there.

Which meant that while Terry drove her own car, I piloted Mel’s tiny Toyota Prius. It was comfortable enough, though I admit the disco ball on the dashboard and “One Direction fans only” sticker on the side of the car drew a few stares from fellow motorists.

The thing is, I didn’t even have to drive the return trip home like Terry and Jack did. I flew back so that I could get to work without burning more vacation days than necessary.

Still, the thought of driving 2,500+ miles to points far west is somewhat less appealing than it once was.

I have a solution, though: We will rent a private jet. As the family drives to each one of our touristy stops, I will fly ahead in comfort.

You know, to make sure everything is ready once they get there.

Happy 15th birthday, Jack

Today our youngest child, Jack, turns 15.

A bit of an awkward age, that one. I once wrote a blog post in which I said the 15-year-old version of myself is really the only iteration of me I don't especially like.

Jack seems to be handling it OK, though. He's a sophomore in high school who takes honors classes, gets good grades, plays the trumpet in band, serves as a class officer, and runs on the cross country and track teams.

All very rewarding activities, and all good for the college resume.

Socially, he's coming along about as well as any 15-year-old boy generally does. He has a small group of friends who hang out together, most of whom started learning to drive a full year before Jack will. Jack was accelerated a grade in elementary school, so he's considerably younger than his classmates.

He's anxious to start driving, if a bit nervous about the prospect of it. I tell him he'll do fine, and he really will. He's smart and he's a good kid.

All parents think their kids are good kids, of course, and in most cases they're right. I like kids. Kids of all ages, really. They're fun to talk to and fascinating to watch as they make the same sort of mistakes you did when you were their age.

There's a lot to be learned from making mistakes, and we should probably let our kids make more of them. The parental urge to keep them from all disappointment and danger isn't always in their best interest.

Fortunately(?), Jack makes his share of mistakes. What he needs to do is get the hang of learning from them and not repeating them (or at least not repeating them so often). He'll get there. Lord knows I didn't have my overall act together at age 15 the way he does.

If he remains the fundamentally decent person he is now—and I have no reason to believe he won't—Jack will do well in life. However the saying goes, nice guys generally don't finish last in my experience, at least not in the long run.

And he's a nice guy.

Happy birthday, Youngest Son Who Is About A Half-A-Foot Taller Than Me.

Having kids who can drive is great! And it's also not!

Three of my children are licensed by the State of Ohio to operate a motor vehicle, and #4 can get her temps in a little more than six months.

There are pros and cons to this.

From a parent's perspective, the "pros" center on convenience. No more taxiing the kids around. If they have soccer practice, fine. Grab the keys and drive yourself. Want to go to the mall? Excellent. I'll just stay here. Enjoy yourself.

And if they manage to save up enough cash to buy their own car, as two of mine have done and the third is on the verge of doing? Jackpot. They can drive themselves AND you still have a car available should you need it.

As for the "cons," well, I'm not sure I even need to list them. Unleashing your child on public roads, even if they've gone through driver's education and have completed the required hours of practice, is a nerve-wracking thing. You know how stupid and reckless other drivers are, and now you're telling your kid to go out there and take his/her chances with them.

So I'm eternally torn. Life is easier for Terry and me in that we've recouped all the hours we used to spend driving our children and their friends around town. But the worry is ever-present. As are the car insurance bills.

Yeah, insurance. Insanely expensive. It's reasonable to expect your child to pitch in, but there's no way even my kids who have jobs could foot the bill on their own.

Then there's gas, repairs, license and tag fees, etc.

The verdict? Driving kids = convenient, but driving kids also = worry and expense. It's up to each parent to figure out which one outweighs the other.

I wish I had an answer for you.

Driving Daddy crazy

Exactly 116 days from today, my daughter Chloe can get her temporary driver's license.

I know this because Chloe takes it upon herself to keep me updated on the Chloe Driving Countdown. This has been going on for the last year or so. We'll pass each other in the house and she'll casually mention, "You know, I can drive in four months." As if this is the single greatest thing that will ever happen to me and my life will be complete once she gets that learner's permit.

(QUESTION: Am I dating myself by calling it a "learner's permit?" Does anyone call it that anymore? Or did that phrase go out with the last episode of the "Love Boat?")

Anyway, having already taught Elissa to drive, I'm fairly confident I know what I'm doing. I took Elissa down to the high school parking lot on Sunday evenings for her first few times behind the wheel. The parking lot is undertstandably deserted on Sundays, which is good when you're trying to give the widest possible berth to someone whose grasp of which one is the gas pedal and which one is the brake pedal isn't exactly solid.

I would have Elissa drive around and around and around the school, just to give her a feel for accelerating, steering, stopping, parking, not running into stationary objects, etc. Then, just to mix it up and really live on the wild side, we would turn around and drive the other way around the school. It was almost too much for her to take in.

I was telling someone recently about the first time I had Elissa drive in traffic. We were near the end of one of our circle-the-high-school-57-times sessions when I said, "OK, now drive home." And her response was classic: "You mean on the road?" Yes, on the road. You'll find that that's the generally accepted method of traveling from one location to another: on a paved road.

Now understand, it's not like I was asking her to drive across the country or anything. It's maybe three-quarters of a mile from where we were parked to our house. But it's up a big hill and there are stop signs and yellow lines involved, and the whole thing can be a little intimidating to a newbie driver, I suppose. But Elissa was game, so she pulled out onto Rockefeller Road slowly, just as I had instructed her.

Actually, she took the "slowly" part a little too seriously. As we started climbing the hill to get back to our house, Elissa pushed the gas pedal down a full one-sixteenth of an inch, bringing us up to the mind-boggling speed of 12 MPH. And of course there was a car behind us. (As it turned out, the driver was our friend Jim McIntyre, who was actually on his way to our house, too, so it was OK. But he was required by the Guy's Code of Sarcasm to let Elissa know that she was a reckless driver who really needed to slow down out there.)

Anyway, we did eventually get home, though as I recall it took about an hour. And Elissa did eventually learn to break the 20-MPH mark and is now a licensed driver...a pretty good one, too. Having a third driver in the house is a handy thing when you have young kids, we find. Which is why I don't mind Chloe getting her license.

Whenever I'm out driving and Chloe is in the car with me, she likes to make these "vroom vroom" sounds, like she's 5 years old and pretending to drive the car herself. This makes me think that we're going to have the opposite problem with her and that staying under the speed limit may be a challenge. Maybe we need to institute a "no vroom vroom" rule.

All I'm saying is, if you happen to be in Wickliffe on a Sunday evening this spring, you might want to stay away from the high school parking lot. Consider this your warning.