Mom's Taxi!

Years ago, in the dark ages, when we first signed up with AOL for internet access (you remember – dial-up, slow, busy signals, etc.), I was able to get taxi4u for my e-mail address. I thought I was so clever. None of the kids drove and my days consisted of drop off, drop off, drop off, pick up, pick up, pick up, go home. – in that order. Kathleen actually grew up in a child safety seat. Her first words were "get in the car!" and "I’d like a large Diet Coke, please". Well, my credit card expired and AOL dropped us, so I signed up for taxi4u on a free Hotmail account, but could never remember the password. So sitting out there in a cyber grave yard somewhere is an e-mail account jam packed with old unanswered mail. I then had to come up with a new name and all the good taxi names were taken (even some of the bad ones). Finally, I was able to use taxi4umom@hotmail.com.

Today is the end of an era. Kathleen, my youngest child, has her driver’s license and a new car. I will never be taxi4umom again. I am actually shedding a small tear or two as I am jumping for joy. I have grumbled about this for years and yet am feeling a little bit of empty-nest syndrome. This morning, however, I found that mom is still needed. We were going to make a little dry run down to West High so Kathleen knew what the traffic was like when she would be going to school. Lo and behold, her car would not start. She had left the lights on all night. We have had this car less than 24 hours and it already has a dead battery. In her defense, all the other cars have a twilight sensor, so we never actually have to turn the lights off or on. Anyway we had a short lesson on how to jump start a car.

Kathleen is going to be a very good driver. She is attentive and can’t drive with her friends until January. And I haven’t seen her since 10:00 this morning. She is off driving somewhere.
I am keeping the taxi4umom@hotmail.com address. Sort of like a mental scrapbook.