At 84, I have reached an important milestone.

I have officially fired my rental car.

Not because I can’t still drive.

Because I’ve become smart enough not to.

Kate and I finally stopped renting cars whenever we’re in Edmonton.

People assume we’ve lost our freedom.

Actually, we’ve discovered it.

Edmonton has one of the finest public transit systems in North America.

We live two blocks from an LRT station. For a couple of dollars we ride across the city to a huge shopping centre, spend an hour pretending we’re only buying milk, emerge with enough groceries to survive a nuclear winter, then call a taxi.

Nine dollars later the driver helps carry everything to our front door.

Meanwhile, I’m sitting in my favourite chair wondering why I ever thought spending thousands of dollars a month to own temporary anxiety was a good idea.

When we rented cars our transportation bill often approached $4,000 a month.

That’s before gas.

Most of the time the car wasn’t transporting us anywhere.

It was relaxing in our garage.

Probably laughing at us.

The real challenge wasn’t driving.

It was figuring out how.

Our beloved 2008 Honda and I had become one organism.

If a squirrel coughed three blocks away, my foot was already easing onto the brake.

Forty years of muscle memory.

Then I’d climb into this year’s rental.

The dashboard looked like NASA had misplaced a space shuttle.

I’d spend the first twenty minutes trying to locate Reverse.

The windshield wipers would begin enthusiastically cleaning a perfectly dry windshield.

The radio would suddenly announce baseball scores from Uruguay.

The navigation system would politely suggest,

“In three hundred metres… panic.”

By the time I finally understood all the buttons, it was almost time to return the car.

Then came the part that terrified me.

Not traffic.

Not pedestrians.

Not parallel parking.

Damage.

Have you noticed that a tiny scratch on a rental car now costs about the same as replacing the roof on a small cathedral?

A little shopping cart kisses the bumper.

Two thousand dollars.

A pebble glances off the windshield.

Congratulations! You have just financed someone’s second vacation home.

Then there’s Alberta hail.

Other provinces think hail is weather.

Albertans think it’s an insurance claim waiting for a postal code.

Every dark cloud became a financial thriller.

I’d park beneath the nearest tree, bridge or exceptionally large pigeon if it offered protection.

The rental companies cheerfully point out the tiny chip already in the windshield.

“See? We’ve documented it.”

Wonderful.

Now I get to spend the next week praying some enthusiastic gravel truck doesn’t transform that chip into modern art.

Sometimes I wonder whether rental companies make more money repairing cars than renting them.

They have armies of repair shops.

I have a tube of touch-up paint and optimism.

I once heard about a fellow who arrived late for work.

His boss demanded an explanation.

“I was driving slowly.”

“Why?”

“I saved a little boy’s life.”

“How?”

“If I’d been driving faster, I’d have hit him.”

At 84, that joke begins sounding less like comedy and more like an excellent retirement plan.

One of our friends has a senior position with Enterprise Rent-A-Car.

He picked me up for lunch one day.

I confessed that we’d stopped renting cars and had become enthusiastic users of Edmonton Transit.

I expected a sales pitch.

Instead, he grinned.

“I’m glad.”

Then he said something that has stayed with me ever since.

“Too many people your age don’t stop driving until they’ve had a serious accident.”

There wasn’t a trace of criticism in his voice.

Only relief.

That surprised me.

It also made me realize something.

Growing older isn’t about proving you can still do everything you did at thirty.

It’s knowing which things you no longer have to prove.

Today, Kate and I ride the LRT.

We meet interesting people.

We read while someone else does the driving.

Our taxi drivers cheerfully help us unload the groceries.

I don’t spend three days learning where the headlights are.

I don’t flinch every time I hear thunder.

I don’t calculate the replacement value of a windshield every time I pass a gravel truck.

And I sleep a whole lot better.

The funny thing is, giving up rental cars didn’t make my world smaller.

It made it larger.

I spend less time worrying about traffic and more time noticing the city rolling by.

The squirrels seem happier.

The pedestrians certainly do.

And somewhere in Edmonton, there’s a rental car sitting in a garage…wondering why I never came back.