MONTCLAIR, N.J. — It's a ritual in every state across the nation. Some stranger you will never see again hands your child a driver's license — and you're left facing the consequences.

As my ancestors would say, "Best o' luck to ya."

In truth, most parents are torn between wanting their children to drive at age 14 (to ease the endless schlepping) and realizing that some should not get their licenses until they are at least 25, when those testosterone-induced storm surges have subsided.

Wherever you fall on that spectrum, one thing's certain: Parents, you can't even imagine the variety of car problems your children will come up with. Here's the story of one family (mine) with three teens.

———

Teen No. 1, my stepdaughter, scared the heck out of me when she was behind the wheel, so much so that I only sat on the passenger side of her car once in her first three years of driving.

She started off stuck at one speed — 45 mph — for every situation. I thought we were either going to be mowed down by passing cars on the Garden State Parkway or slaughter innocents ourselves as we careered through town.

In time, she figured out how to vary her speed — but not how to slow down. She talked her way out of a speeding ticket in New Jersey but quickly got nailed in New York and again in California.

"I was only going 83, not 93!" Teen No. 1 declared in a huff, failing to see how that argument would not impress a judge.

———

Teen No. 2, my stepson, got his driver's license at 16. Within two weeks, the California State Police called to report that he had been going 101 mph on a freeway outside San Francisco.

So many reactions bubbled up, so many questions. Everything from "Thank God he is alive" to "We'll kill him ourselves." Who has not heard about California's legendary traffic jams? Where were all those cars when we needed them?

Let's not even wonder why his mother would hand the Jaguar over to a novice driver with friends to impress. Any car of mine would have started to shake violently at about 72 mph and could have saved Teen No. 2 a court date.

So, besides temporarily losing his license, Teen No. 2 faced a $700 fine or 50 hours of community service. He chose the latter, which translated into shoveling elephant dung at the Oakland Zoo for eight days over Christmas break.

I wanted to kiss the judge.

Still, the reverberations of that night lasted for years.

Teen No. 2 did not drive again until he was almost 20. He ended up living in Switzerland for two years, where the driving age is 18 and everyone takes the train anyway. But when he came back to the United States for college, he didn't drive for another year because no one in the family could afford to put him on their insurance.

The biggest shocker? College applications that demanded information about court dealings. Since Teen No. 2 was not a 250-pound linebacker or a prized basketball recruit, he got rejected from every college that required those records.

A pretty harsh penalty for being honest, I would say.

———

At last, with Teen No. 3, the family had an excellent driver, someone who could drive across the country at age 17 and make sure that Teen No. 1 arrived at college on time.

To accomplish this, however, my daughter drove illegally with her grandfather for weeks before she had any license. While I thought she was swimming and boating in upstate New York, the two of them were on daily two- to three-hour road trips, flying down highways and twisting country roads, visiting Amish country and resort towns, bakeries and ice cream stores.

My father was never one for rules anyway.

That fall, I faced another dilemma. Teen No. 3, at 16, was a budding college lacrosse recruit, but I was working and could not get her to tryouts in neighboring states. Her graduated New Jersey license banned driving solo until age 17.

What to do? I crossed my fingers and sent her off.

It took about 21 minutes for everyone at Montclair High to find this out. Several parents even called to report, confidentially, that they had seen Teen No. 3 driving. I said, "Oh, thank you for telling me," and hung up.

I understand why they called. Among Teen No. 3's friends, one totaled a BMW (not his) driving 150 yards to the convenience store. Another scraped her parents' Mercedes from stem to stern in the YMCA parking lot down ramp. A third ran into her own house while parking.

And those were just her close friends. Lord knows what havoc the rest of the school wreaked on the roads of New Jersey.

And even good drivers have blind spots — in this case, parking tickets. Teen No. 3 got an $18 ticket. She meant to pay, but forgot. Was smart enough to hide the next five legal notices that came in the mail, but not wise enough to open and read them.

How can someone who got straight A's in pre-Calculus not understand that parking tickets double every two weeks?

I finally saw something peeking out of her purse and opened it. Not only had the ticket and fines blossomed to $166, but MY license had been suspended two months earlier because I owned the car. I had to sit down as I pondered the complications that could have caused.

Teen No. 3 paid the fines and I took away the car. Four days later she asked for her keys back. I said no.

"OK, but that means I will be a passenger in cars driven by Montclair boys," she noted.

Checkmate. A rough guess puts their accident and/or speeding rates at around 90 percent.

I handed her the keys.