Gearing up for the day Son No. 2 gets a car

I was walking through Northgate Mall the other day when I noticed a sign in a window of the offices of a driving school.

The sign said the driving school is taking applications for instructors and encouraged applicants who, among other things, could handle occasional stressful situations.

“No doubt,” I thought to myself.

Recently our family has undertaken the challenge of teaching Son No. 2 some basic driving skills. He turns 15 in a few months and has vowed to get his learner’s permit on Day 1.

In the meantime, he has done a bit of practice on a family farm and in an empty parking lot — just the fundamentals: adjusting the seat and mirrors, shifting to drive and reverse, learning how to park.

Nothing too stressful. Still, I’m not looking forward to the day a year or so from now when we practice merging into downtown traffic during rush hour.

One Sunday I took him to a parking lot. There wasn’t another car within a quarter of a mile. We practiced using the turn signal and pulling up to the curb without scraping the rims.

This is an exciting time for our younger son, who is a car nut. And calling him a “car nut” may be putting it mildly.

The other day, he and I and his older brother were in a car together in downtown Chattanooga when a truly odd-looking vehicle drove by.

“What the heck is that?” our 19-year-old son said as the purple convertible passed us.

“That’s a Geo,” the 14-year-old said confidently.

“How in the world do you know that?” I inserted.

“I know all the cars,” he said. “Oh, you know ‘all the cars,’ I repeated sarcastically.”

But his boast isn’t far from the truth.

Line up 1,000 people, and maybe one or two would recognize a Geo Metro convertible. I looked it up and the convertibles were phased out in 1993, 13 years before Son. No. 2 was born.

Once, I told our younger son to call out the names of all the cars coming down Signal Mountain while we were going up. They were whizzing by at a rate of about one per second, yet he never hesitated.

“Suburban, F-150, Accord, Tacoma,” he said, then gulped in a breath. “Silverado, Pilot, Tahoe, Highlander, CRV.”

And on and on he went, never missing a beat.

I have told him that when the time comes we will pitch in as a family and buy him a used car.

Telling this to a kid who knows “all the cars” creates a problem.

Tell most 16-year-olds to look for a used car online, and they’ll probably search for one or two makes and models that they have seen friends driving.

But our baby boy has a universe of hundreds of options swirling in his head. Which means he has potentially thousands of questions for good old dad as he grinds through his options online.

“How durable are Volvos, Daddy?”

“Why does a V-6 last longer than a four-cylinder engine, Daddy?”

“Why can’t I have a car without airbags, Daddy?”

“Are there any Subarus that aren’t all-wheel-drive?”

This conversation will not end until a car is purchased. But at least I know he cares and that he’ll appreciate what he gets.

He is already scouting jobs so he can make a substantial contribution to his “car fund.”

I asked him the other day if he was going to take care of this hypothetical new vehicle.

“Oh, yes,” he said. “I’m going to baby it. You can believe that.”

Frankly, I don’t doubt it for a second.