My 20 year old son, adopted at age 8, spent his entire school career in special ed for behavior issues, his intelligence is solidly average, and he’s been a right good son to me.

Like many adopted children, he seriously floundered after high school, unable to hold a job for long; his behavior issues would emerge at work and prevent him from getting along with the boss, or with others. The natural consequence would be an immediate firing. He went through a dozen jobs

He spent countless hours hanging out with me, making sure the mother-son connection was still there. He’s now in his third year of not being in school, and he is only now maturing enough to hold a job for long, he’s been making pizzas for several months now.

However, last summer he received a speeding ticket for flying 76 mph in a 45 mph zone. He didn’t tell me about it, he didn’t show up for court, and he was hit with nearly a $400 fine. When the courthouse return address mailing arrived here, I confronted him about it and the story came spilling out.

He paid the fine off slowly, and received notice that his driver’s license was being suspended for six months. Even I was taken aback by the severity and harshness so he asked me to call the clerk of courts to help him understand this punishment…how could he get to work?

I called and a very nice lady explained that in Georgia, for kids under 21, this was an automatic suspension designed to protect immature kids who think that speeding is of no consequence. She went on to say that he’d need to pay another $210 to be reinstated, he’d have to pay to attend a Defensive Driver’s Class, plus he’d have to re-take the Driver’s License test, and NO variances were ever given.

She told me about a 19 year old kid who was his mother’s sole transport to kidney dialysis in Augusta. Too bad, too sad, but he lost his license. She’d have to make other arrangements.

Wow, we also need to come up with Plan B as this guy simply can’t sit around for 6 months without a job or money.

He was devastated, not totally understanding all this. I’d had the other lady on speakerphone so he could hear it all, he was fighting tears which I’d much rather see than raging. I even had to call his boss who was ugly to me on the phone. “Can’t he ride the bus?”

"No, we live way out in the country, no buses out here."

“Isn’t he man enough to call me himself?”

“He asked me to do so, he is devastated about this, I apologize, but we just found out an hour ago that it was an immediate suspension,” I felt like hanging up on this ill-tempered guy but politeness through gritted teeth prevailed fortunately. My son had not wanted to call until he got a grip, but was polite enough to know that his boss needed to know asap.

I’ve been sitting here, trying to talk my son through the process, praising him for not acting out over this obviously painful time, glad he chose to discuss it with me instead of self-medicating or some other stupid choice a young man might make.

We’ll come up with something lawfully. Hopefully my son will come to realize that this may be a blessing in disguise, this may have saved him from a horrible accident had he not learned, the hard way, the consequence of speeding.