As my oldest child became a teenager, he wanted to learn how to drive a car with a manual transmission. We have a Jeep Wrangler with a six-speed that is not necessarily the easiest thing to learn on but was an adequate “lab” for learning this skill. We went to a large parking lot near our house. I drove the car around a bit and explained the interaction between the stick shift, my left foot on the clutch, and my right foot on the accelerator. My son is mechanically inclined, so he soaked this all up and we decided to change places and see how he did. As expected, the first few attempts resulted in the car lurching forward and stalling because he took his foot off the clutch too fast. No problem! We discussed how the clutch and accelerator had to interact to create the smooth transition from stopped to moving in first gear. He nodded, indicating he understood. Things were going great!