One sunny, absolutely gorgeous Sunday
afternoon in my early driving days, my best friend Diana decided that she was
going to take me out and teach me to drive a stick shift. We were in high school and I don’t remember
for sure, but I don’t think we had turned 16 yet.
Having learned to drive with only an automatic, I had never driven a
standard, and had absolutely no knowledge of how to shift gears or use the
clutch. So, we hopped into her dad’s
little white pickup and headed out a couple of miles into the country.
We
were on a dirt road and there were ditches on both sides of the road surrounded
by fields of golden yellow corn. It was
just your normal two lane dirt road and we never saw any traffic the entire
time we were out there. There were
fairly deep irrigation ditches on both sides of the road.
As
we drove down the road, Di was showing me how to use the clutch and how to
shift the gears. We switched positions
and I became the driver.
Who
knows what happened next? Driving down
the road I was fine, but then she told me to stop and turn around in the road. Of course, I never got the hang of the clutch and shifting and everything else that went with it, so I KILLED it!
Somehow,
I managed to end up facing the ditch a little into it. She never said a word to me, but instead, got
out of the pickup and came around to my side (the driver’s side) which I knew
immediately meant, “Get out!! I’m
driving now!”
We
drove all the way back to town in silence.
When we drove in the driveway at her parent’s house, she looked over at
me and said, “Just give up trying to learn to drive a stick shift, Jari! You’re hopeless!”
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