"Hey, whose jeans are those?" Having two daughters, I never thought I'd have to worry about anyone wearing my clothes. But while baggy and grunge were "in", my jeans and shirts became part of their wardrobe. The older and baggier the better . . . to give the impression that they had bought them "thrifting." The grunge look is apparently "out", and my clothes are now "stuff my dad wears that I wish he wouldn't."

I have less trouble recognizing the genes. Kristen never appreciated her older sister until her older sister, Meredith, left for college. Kristen feels she has become the "sole focus" of her parents. She feels we are trying to "perfect" her in ways that we didn't Meredith.

Kristen turned 16 on the Friday beginning Memorial Day weekend. She took her driver's test on her 16th birthday. Unfortunately, her scores reflected her genes, and her genes did her no good in keeping her license.

She lost 10 points for driving too slow . . . those are her mother's genes! After Kristen made a slow left turn, the examiner said, "I could have walked through that faster than you drove it!"

She lost 10 points for rolling through stop signs . . . that's her father's genes! After Kristen came to a complete stop at her third stop sign (after apparently rolling through the first two stop signs), the examiner said, "Well, I'm glad to see that you KNOW how to stop!"

And she lost 25 points on her maneuverability test for lack of coordination in keeping the car parallel to the road . . . that's my in-laws! The test is to drive forward though and around some pink cones and then turn in reverse. Kind of like driving around the orange barrels on any of our freeways this summer.

Kristen treated the cones like a May pole and tried to wrap the car around them. Sort of like how the 1950s cowboy movies portray American Indians circling the wagons of homesteaders. After she completed the maneuverability test, the examiner got out of the car (he probably wanted to kiss the ground because he'd survived) and said, "After seeing you go through that, I want you to take the keys out of the ignition while I am out of the car!"

Her examiner was . . . in words of Charles Turner, former Administrator of Saint Anthony Hospital . . . a rather "ample" person. Probably didn't help her test scores when Kristen said, after the examiner had trouble getting in our car, "Maybe my dad can push you in." Her mother's genes, again.

When we left after getting her license, the examiner said, "Good luck, you're going to need it!"

Actually, "good luck" didn't last for more than a day. Kristen lost her license the very next day! She lost it because she was late turning on her lights the next evening when driving a car that she hadn't driven before. When she turned "on" her lights, she attracted the attention of the Highway Patrol. This was Memorial Day weekend. The Patrol was under a "no warning" directive for that weekend (if they stopped anyone, they had to issue a citation rather than a warning).

The Patrol officer stopped her to see why she had turned her lights on. Kristen answered honestly, "I didn't know how at first." Her mother's genes again. That was the wrong answer. The officer said she "was obliged", because of the directive, to issue the ticket (profit is still not a dirty word in Ohio).

Driving violations even as innocuous as turning your lights on late require an appearance in Juvenile Court. I, being a lawyer, thought this would be a "great experience" for Kristen to see the judicial system. Those were her father's defective genes!

That's a bad thing to experience in Delaware, Ohio. Any violation involving a juvenile results in a license suspension. All of the past week's juvenile offenders appear together in a two-hour proceeding before a magistrate. During Kristen's appearance, the magistrate, apparently worn out by the process, issued only two sanctions -- a license suspension for either 4 weeks or 6 weeks. The boys all got 4-week suspensions and the girls including Kristen all got 6. For this magistrate, Kristen had the wrong genes!