You Heard It Here: I Blew It. Big Time.

With the title of this blog, you may be thinking that I’m talking about blowing something up (as I’m apt to do in several of my books), but what I really mean is I made a big mistake. Not just big, but colossal. Nothing of life threatening or earth-shattering proportions, but big enough to feel tremendously guilty on several levels and for multiple days.

Okay, I’ve built it up. You ready? Wanna hear my screw up? Here it is. Confession time.

I took my daughter for her driving test on the last day of the year, but I forgot an important piece of paperwork. I thought I had everything. I would’ve sworn on my life that I had everything. But I didn’t. So she couldn’t take her test. Trust me, it was a very long thirty minute drive home. I couldn’t apologize enough. But my kid…she’s so awesome that she didn’t say she hated my guts. She didn’t scream at me or rag on me. She just took the whole incident in stride. Yes, there might’ve been a few tears, because she’d psyched herself up to take the driving test and couldn’t, so all that adrenaline crashed and landed in a pile of tears, but she didn’t take it out on me. How much do I love my kid for that? A damn ton, I tell you. She had every right to let me have it. Yes, it was an accident. And God knows I’d never put her through that kind of emotional trauma on purpose. I hated it. I’d have done just about anything to make it better.

But it’s a week later and I’m happy to say that this time I brought the right paperwork and my kid brought her A driving game. So after taking her test — and passing — my daughter is now a licensed California driver. Look out world, here she comes!! I’m very proud of her and she’s a great driver!

Here’s the car she drove for her test. I call her Goldie. (I know…I have zero imagination.) My apologies for the dark pic. I thought I had more daylight than this.

Honestly, I couldn’t have felt any worse if I’d wanted to. I was as miserable if not more so than my daughter. So tell me I’m not alone. Have any of you screwed up really bad where it caused your child or someone you loved a lot of unintentional emotional pain? Or maybe I’m just the worst parent on the planet. (Uh…bummer!) Let me know!