They're all high achievers, known for their good academic performance at their high school. This is their last year at high school, all of them thinking of their future, planning to make application at various universities. Mostly within Ontario. There's plenty to select from. Their guidance counsellor for reasons of his own, tends to recommend more rurally-based colleges and universities. This infuriates my granddaughter who knows where she wants to attend university, and all of her choices are located in Canada's large cities, though one or two if her first selections don't come in, are in smaller cities.

She doesn't seem the least bit fazed by the prospect of leaving home. She's downright euphoric thinking about her upcoming university years. She has her first choice selections and is hoping... Her student record is a good one, she's a hard worker and has ambitions for the profession she has chosen, law. She sent me yesterday in an email the latest group-of-four photos taken at school; her and her three closest friends all wearing pink because it was a "pink day" for them.

She tells me daily about the driving exploits of her closest friend whose parents have just bought her a black four-door Honda Civic, as a gift to celebrate her having achieved her permanent driving licence. She despairs that her friend hasn't even bothered looking at the handbook that came with the vehicle, and it was she who showed her friend how to turn on the back window defroster, set the clock, and other things she had no interest in pursuing herself as the car owner.

Telling me that her friend, while driving herself and several other girls home after school, backed into the car behind her while negotiating her way out of the parking spot where she had left the car. How, a week later, she had almost run into a bicyclist who had been serenely unaware of the danger he was in, earbuds firmly in place, oblivious to road traffic.

She would be a better driver, she tells us. She plans to stop fully at all stop signs, not slide past like her best friend. And she would strictly observe the speed limit, also not like her friend who has a tendency to drive too fast. And who had failed her first few attempts at persuading the license bureau tester of her consummate driving skills, the first time by persistently having one hand only on the steering wheel.