The Right Rite of Passage.(learning to drive)(Column)

It should have been a perfect morning, a cornflower-blue sky framed in crisp mountain air. The sun mirrored a yellow Fiat X1-9's hood that June day more than 30 years ago, glinting as bright as the morning's prospect: Today I would get my chance to complete an adult rite of passage. As a newly minted 16-year-old, I'd test to hold a certified motor vehicle driver's license.

The day was anything but perfect. I failed that Nevada state driver's exam, and by law was required to wait two weeks to retake the test.

You can imagine how crushed I was. Still, I earned a priceless consolation prize when my father and I took a ride south along Interstate 395 out of Reno, a ride borne in frustration and shame that grew into something special. No words could salve the shared pain; instead, twisty roads themselves offered a therapeutic cruise to nowhere in particular.

Three decades later I remember and appreciate anew that moment as my eldest son seeks his passport to automotive liberty. How could I not relive the moment: The story's message-and effect-lasts forever.

Why did I fail? Where I learned to drive, at Bob Bondurant's School of High Performance Driving, never once did Bob explain how to parallel park the race-prepped Datsun 510. That I was unable to snuggle a well-used '65 Mustang between two pylons was sufficient to prompt a Department of Motor Vehicle examiner to disqualify me. Talk about planting seeds of loathing for inept bureaucrats.

Forget that I could right a car on a skidpad and execute a perfect heel-toe shift. Forget honing reflexes on an accident-avoidance simulator: To park a pony between two cars was the DMV's paramount question.

I didn't have that answer.