Rant #940: Here In My Car ...

Americans have a love affair/hate affair with their cars.

I know that I do.

I love to drive, and I have driven all over the place.

I drive to work, drive to do the weekly shopping, drive to take my son to school, drive down to Florida almost every year.

We all love to drive, but we lament the upkeep of our cars, including filling up with gas each week.

Owning a car takes a big, big bite out of our pocketbooks.

I have been driving since I was 17, and that was after getting my learner's permit at 15.

I aced both tests on the first try, I made add (gloat, gloat).

Anyway, something has come up in my own family related to cars, and I don't really know what to do.

My son is 17, and I want him to learn to drive. He wants to learn, too, and is anxious to take his learner's permit test.

The problem is that he has a learning disability, and at least right now, he can't possibly pass such a test.

He cannot take tests, because his learning disability is that he cannot retain the facts that he needs to pass such a test, or just about any test, for that matter.

We go over the driving rules every weekend. New York State has a couple of online sites that have practice tests, and he takes these tests, but he routinely fails the tests.

I have him watch me while we are in the car, and I ask him questions about why I do what I do when I am driving.

He knows the basic rules, such as why I am stopping for a specific reason, but once it comes to the questions about reasoning, such as what to do in certain situations where special traffic rules apply, he simply cannot figure out in his head what is right and what is wrong.

Now, you can easily say that if a person cannot pass his learner's permit test, he should not be driving, and that is a valid point.

But to me, the learner's permit test is the biggest hurdle to him driving.

If he could just pass the test, I really do believe that he will be able to pass the actual driving test with ease.

It is the test that irks both me and him.

I have looked up a solution to this problem on the Internet, and the best advice that I get is that in New York State, he can have the test read to him, and he can give out the answers verbally.

That is fine and good, but I don't think that will help him much, because again, when it comes to something where he really has to reason, and to decide what is right and what is wrong, he usually gets fouled up, so a verbal test probably won't help him.

He must learn to drive, because it will expand his possibilities for getting a decent job. He is not going to college at this period in time, and in school, he is in a non-academic program, much of which he experiences away from the school and which he really enjoys.

He has one more year left of formal education, and my wife and I are concerned for his future, especially during this time when our economy is not very good.

He has a summer job at a camp, and he will need transportation to get there.

So driving will expand his horizons. We simply do not know what to do to allow him to pass his learner's permit test.

I don't often do this here, but I am going to do it now: I am going to ask for advice.

Does anybody have any ideas about this? What can we do to help him pass that test that we aren't already doing?

Any advice? I will listen to anything at this point, because I do not know what else I can do to help him.

Maybe you have some ideas ...