As you can guess, it has been much more intense with the boy. First, most of his school friends already had their driver’s license, and some of their parents have the wherewithal to put them in brand new first-rides – free and clear. This is not the way of the ink-stained-wretch/writer provider, I assure you. It was not the way for me at 16, either.
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I learned the mechanics of driving by working a couple of years on a dairy farm at high school age. My boss was not my dad – he just told me once how to operate a piece of equipment and left me to figure it out. He had other work to do. So, I was thrown into double-clutching on straight-gear, dual-range farm hauling trucks, pulling a “honey wagon” behind a tractor, and how to coax a tranny into gear with worn out 3-on-the-tree pick-ups out on a farm roads. I couldn’t break those old beasts, but I did do some impressive damage to a row of metal fencing with a tractor the first time I got on one. Learned a little about stick welding that day, too. Where was my son going to get such a benign, way out in the country learning and proving ground these days? He wasn’t in modern suburbia.
Incredibly, he wanted to learn how to drive an import car with a 5-speed – no pussy automatic for him! Turns out all the Driver’s Ed classes in our area only teach how to drive an auto these days. What is up with that?
Plus, oh my god! All those years of my writing about racing and performance cars, and stacks of my car mags lying around our house, and my wrenching on rides in the driveway, and his playing Mario Kart, Gran Turismo and other assorted car video games, had actually had an affect on his impressionable young soul. I would like to think it must have been the great vintage Sports Car Graphic mags around him that turned him to imported cars; but know it was probably the digital crack of car video games, and his lurking on import car forums for the past two years.
Anyway, I found myself -- in some sort of out-of-body, perplexing, hypocritical way -- arguing with him (and the family) to learn to drive in a whale-sized, 4000-lb. domestic, automatic-trans car. I suddenly wanted four very big corners around him because they were (are?) going to get knocked off. I know that a car and raging youth testosterone is a volatile mix. A car is not sensible to an American male teen, it is sensuous. Just listen to Chuck Berry or Bruce Springsteen, or Jonathan Richman.& The Modern Lovers. My gender bias was showing and I had the statistics to prove it.
I tried, really I did. I bellowed. I used logic. I cajoled. I put my foot down (right). I offered to buy a car free-and-clear. How about a 1995 or so Caprice? A used Buick station wagon? A full-sized pick-up? I found I was on very shaky ground.
No logic slouch he (or the rest of the family) – how could a car performance-minded dad, a dad who has spent his life singing the praises of high-performance and racing, a dad who has owned and driven performance cars, a dad for whom cars are a passion and never will be an appliance – how could this dad try to inflict on his only son, my flesh-and-blood, the exact opposite? I caved. Damn the statistics.
So, he’s learned (from his mom; turns out I “yell” too much) how to drive a stick. Thank goodness she knew how – one of the many reasons I fell in love with her in the first place. He’s got a summer job and making payments on a 9 year old used performance import car with an expensive gearbox. If fact, he might learn from me how to replace a clutch by the time he’s done. Guess we’re both growing up.
