White Knuckles and 16 year old drivers.

I promised the boys that we would go to the "City" this weekend and do some trades on games and get the boys some shoes and to return a pair of jeans Dallas got for Christmas that turned out to be too small. Personally I think it was just the cut of the jeans he objected to, the others he got that were the exact same size he was fine with. Anywho.... I tossed Dallas the keys and told Liam to buckle in tight. First errand was to Gpa M's to drop off groceries then off to Caldwell. I know this might sound silly to a lot of people but where I live our idea of a traffic jam is the local farmer driving his combine down the road or the cattle that broke the fence. We have little traffic and so we have to go 40 miles to Caldwell to get anywhere near traffic congestion. And my kid needs "traffic" before I am springing him on the world with a license. So Caldwell starts our tour of large towns (by this I mean over 30,000 population) on our agenda today. The boys swore we had to go to the gaming store in Caldwell population 43,200 because Ontario just doesn't have what they need. So, Dallas who has never driven anywhere with "traffic" to speak of, got a crash course today in the art of driving in organized mayhem. When they were done with the gaming store,  I then directed him through Nampa ((81,200) to get the kids some new shoes. Then on to our capitol city of Boise (206,000) to exchange the aforementioned jeans. Dallas did a stellar job and only once did I feel like this:

You would know what this feels like if you were the passenger of a 16 year old on his first time on a four lane highway. Dallas is eligible on Monday to get his drivers license. He has had his permit for 6 months and gone through drivers ed., I just think he needs more "City" time before I set him free.