I feel old.

The reason: My son received his driver's license. Seems like just last week I made truck and fire engine noises to make him laugh during diaper changes. Seems like just yesterday I ran beside him for miles as he mastered his bike sans training wheels. "Wake up and smell the Pike roast, my friend," a colleague said, "he's taller than you."

For some reason, I struggle to believe that I'm old enough to have a young man who can legally drive away from my house, in my wheels, without me.

Seriously; my problem is that his driver's license documents his 16 years, and that means I'm … much older than I want to admit. I'm not nervous about his actual driving, though, because he's good. And you need not take my word for it.

In Michigan, a young person must pass a road test to receive a driver's license. A mandatory element of the road test: a parent rides along. After Scott completed the cone course, the three of us (him, the test official, and me) took a 45-minute spin around the ...