MARK MY WORD: KIDS CAN HIT THE OPEN ROAD WELL BEFORE AGE 16

Look out, Becca's driving a sports car.

It is a shocking pink, Barbie car that scoots around on an environmentally friendly 6-volt battery. You don't have to send this car to the gas pumps.

I never expected my 3-year-old daughter would be driving so soon. But then Joni and I couldn't refuse the garage-sale deal of the century last week.

Since then, driving has become a major pasttime for Becca, who has turned our driveway into her own Grand Prix.

She races round and round the driveway, crashing into bushes and running over the ivy with "Road Warrior" glee.

Often she throws it in reverse, sending the car lurching backward across the concrete pavement, careening into the flowering bushes. Periodically she takes off cross-country through the front yard grass with downright abandon.

And she doesn't even have a license.

She runs over things with such maniacal glee, you wonder if she'll become one of those drivers you love to hate.

Becca knows she's under age, but that doesn't matter.

"How old do you have to be to drive?" Joni asked her the other day. "Five," Becca replied, holding up one hand.

She's so confident about it. I'm sure she figures she will be driving our van by the time she is 5.

Right now, however, she's content to do figure-eights in our driveway, when she's not crashing into shrubbery.

She asked to take the car for a spin down our street, but I flatly rejected the idea out of concern for the safety of the driving public. Who knows how many cars she could run off the road?

Becca's enthusiasm for the open driveway was dampened at first by the sports car's failure to work.

Even after inviting the vehicle inside for some heavy-duty charging, we couldn't get it to go. Even so, we decided that the dining room didn't make a good parking lot. After stumbling over the Barbie car in the dark one night, I decided it was time to banish it to the garage.

But Becca was in luck. After getting it outside, we were able to fine-tune the engine. That meant we jiggled the wires to the battery.

This solved the problem and Becca was soon rolling along and screaming with delight.

Naturally, she prefers to have mom and dad on hand to witness her driving skills and applaud her every move.

At first, she didn't understand the need to turn the wheel. When she wanted to turn around, she simply stopped, exited the car and manually turned it around. But after some quick driving lessons from dad, she grasped the wheel like a pro.

Still, Becca's not one of those cautious drivers. She floors it.

Becca loves to speed up the driveway, staring ahead at the intended collision with a brick wall. I think she would be right at home in the middle of a demolition derby.

Being a three-car family with a two-car garage poses some difficulties. Just backing out our van or Honda can be a problem, particularly when the Barbie car is parked right behind one of them.

As for Becca, she's ready for the open road. There's nothing like a car to make a girl feel independent, at least until the battery runs down.

~Mark Bliss is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.