And yet another great thing about our beach locale is the proliferation of low trafficked roads. Just what the 15-year-old wanted.

Him: Can I drive?
Me: Okay!
Him: Alien, return my parental unit.

We drive standard transmissions, so part one of the lesson is getting the clutch, brake, gas thing together. Oh, and the shift part. He caught on fast.

Next was getting out of the driveway and around the circle in the cul–de-sac. Not bad.

So we went to the next phase–driving on the road, turning and down-shifting. That went well, too. Even that time when there was opposing traffic–a pick-up lumbering in our direction–no freak out. Smooth sailing.

Next was going more deeply throughout the neighborhood, all the way to the main road where we played a version of the Chinese fire drill to swap drivers. Very well done.

On the way back from town, we swapped just as we got off the main road and he drove back. We were coming up to an intersection.

Me: Hey, that was a stop sign.
Him: Hunh? (hitting the brakes a bit late.)
Me: Back up a bit and let’s try that again. What do you do at a stop sign?
Him: You mean that was for me? I saw it, but I didn’t know that it was for me.

Turns out that he was used to seeing them and ignoring them from the passenger seat.

Next lesson, basic traffic rules.