Uber for One (at Least Occasionally)

Playing Spoiler??

What if there was a way to regularly spend 20-30 minutes of quality time with your increasingly independent, now-6′ tall(!), just turned 17 year-old son, without texts or phone calls interrupting?

That had the added the virtue of saving said teenager an hour on (and waiting for) two city buses,** in weather that can only be described as “arctic?”

And that saved the family hundreds if not thousands of dollars a year, to boot?

Road Trip(s)

Fortunately, at least for my family, there is such a place:  in the car, driving to and from school (in our case, Minneapolis’ excellent Southwest High School).

While we don’t do it daily — too busy — my wife and I manage to shuttle back and forth at least a couple of times a week.

Are we spoiling our kid?

Maybe, a little.

But, it feels like we’re spoiling ourselves just a little, too . . . 🙂

P.S.: Smoothing the “hassle factor”:  the money we save buying, insuring and undoubtedly fixing an older third car.

**Southwest High School — and all Minneapolis high schools, as far as I know — no longer provide school buses.  Instead, they provide passes for the kids to use public buses.

Depending on where you live, that can mean close to an hour in transit, with transfers between multiple buses.