College girls and cars

I find it interesting that I receive more responses from personal interest posts than I do from the informative posts.  So here is another one.

The town I have this business in has a college, there is another one about 8 miles away, and two more 1/2 hour drive away.  So I get a few college students each year whose vehicles need repair.  Mostly they let it sit and the battery gets old(I will blog about that college battery sometime).

Now, most young women in college don't let this happen, but it does happen, and it happens often enough to write this;

Just the other day a college parent was talking to me about their daughter's vehicle.  We were going over the basics of how to treat a vehicle that goes to college, so that it will be dependable to start when the student needs to go home at the end of the semester. In the course of the conversation I learned a little bit about their daughter's college life habits and I smoothly slipped into my "College Daddy" speech.  I usually give this speech to distraught young ladies, with a look that wonders if their car is going to work after they had it towed to the shop.  So I morphed it a little for her mother's sake.

"Please, encourage your daughter to never loan out her car to anyone.  Not a friend, not a friend-of-a-friend, not ANY GUYS, and....yes....not her boyfriend.  No matter how much they pull at her heart strings.  Maybe a fiance, but remember, the knot is not tied yet.  If it's her car, she can drive her boyfriend, her boyfriend can be a passenger.  PERIOD!"

Why?  Well some of you are parents of college students and you know why.  Because even it is just an acquaintance, and it's a guy, he will convince that young lady he so badly needs that car to go somewhere.  Ha!  Let him walk.  I have seen way too many young lady's cars that are broken, because one of her girl friends, or worse, one of her male friends, didn't treat it like their own and broke it and didn't care.  They didn't care because they didn't dish over the money to have it repaired.  Or some young buck just took it out and hot rodded it for the fun of it and really trashed it.  Oh yeah, it happens(especially if you send your daughter to school with a cool looking hot rod of a car that can go fast).

When our oldest daughter went off to college the speech was, "If you let anyone at all drive this car I will know it and take your car away."

Parents, be parents, and protect that college daughter of yours.  She will appreciate this kind of protection. You are not controlling her.  She knows you are giving her wise advise because she doesn't want a car that does not get her home for Christmas.  I have not yet met any woman of any age that likes to stand on the other side of a mechanic shop counter.