Who Gave This Woman A License?!

This story takes place a decade ago. My mom and I are on a road trip. I’m seventeen, so I help with the driving. We take a lot of back roads so we don’t deal with much traffic. I’m currently driving and we are the only ones on the road for miles. I briefly take one hand off the wheel to adjust my AC controls.

Mom: “What are you doing?! Keep your hands on the wheel!”

Me: “I was just adjusting the AC. It was getting too cold for my hands.”

Mom: “You can’t do that. It’s reckless. You could cause an accident!”

Me: “Mom, I briefly took my hand off the wheel. I didn’t take my eyes off the road. I didn’t veer out of my lane. And there’s no one around us.”

Mom: “Doesn’t matter! I’m the grownup. You’re still a child. I have years of experience over you.”

I drop it, but at the next rest stop, I pull over and tell Mom she can drive if she doesn’t feel comfortable with my driving. Later, we actually hit some traffic and she’s trying to figure out which road we want to take next. She pulls out her map and opens it on the steering wheel while driving. She looks down at the map for a long time, veers out of her lane, and doesn’t realize what’s going on around her. A few people honk at her.

Me: “Mom, I can take the map and find where we are and where we need to go. Or I can look it up on the GPS or my phone.”

Mom: “I got it. I’ve been doing this for years before technology. How do you think we did this without phones?”

Me: “Mom, please hand me the map! I can look at it. You just need to focus on your driving.”

Mom: “Leave me alone, [My Name]. I’ve got it.”

Me: “You’re veering out of your lane. You’re not paying attention to what’s happening on the road. You might as well be texting and driving.”

Mom: “This is not the same. It’s nothing like texting and driving.”

Me: “You’re right. It’s worse. You’re taking your eyes off the road for way longer than you would if you were texting.”

After some arguing, I eventually convinced her to give me the map, but she continuously did similar things throughout the trip that just led to us fighting a majority of the time. And she wonders why I don’t have good memories of the road trips or why I started to refuse to go on them.