Stick Shift Driving

Saturday, May 1, 2010

For some reason, I've done an abnormal amount of driving this weekend. First was my freeway/almost-getting-killed-by-weird-St.-George-drivers experience yesterday. And today was my stick shift experience. When I was learning to drive, it never crossed my mind that someday I might want to know how to drive anything besides an automatic. Even after Carlton informed me that girls who drive stick are hot, I just wasn't very interested. He forced me to try it a few times, but I was pretty darn, if not downright, terrible, and that was the end of that. So to be honest, I'm not sure what changed my mind recently, but something did, and I have been slowly-but-surely learning to drive it during my trips to St. George (Skyler's car is stick).

Today was another practice session, and this one might not have gone very well. In fact, it's one of those experiences that I can laugh about it now that it's happened, but at the time, it was not at all funny. Up till this point, I felt like I'd been doing well, all things considered. I generally only killed the car when reversing, and I could shift with relative ease between gears (shifting into first from neutral wasn't so smooth, but let's not discuss that). So I wasn't perfect, but I wasn't the worst out there. However, tonight's trip changed all that.

It started out like normal: Skyler's mother asked us to pick something up for his brother Chance's birthday, and Skyler decided to let me drive. I managed to get out of the driveway and onto the road without destroying anything, and we headed on our way. Turns out the place we were going was up a hill across town, and the route we picked happened to be a detour road for the St. George Iron Man. Novice stick driver + stop-and-go traffic + hills = a recipe for disaster.

Well, we made it to our destination, eventually and with much frustration on both sides. I haven't been that frustrated in a long time, at least not with something so trivial as driving. And I can't say anyone has been so frustrated with me in quite a while either. Now you might see this as a bad thing - where's the positive in frustration? Well believe it or not, some good did come out of this situation. I firmly believe that to really know someone, you have to see him at his worst. And while semi-minor frustration is not the worst it can get, it's definitely a change from perpetually happy. Not that I think perpetual frustration would be a good thing, because I definitely prefer happiness, but looking at the positives here, I think occasional frustration has its benefits. And I'm grateful to my stick shift driving fiasco (success?) for helping me see the silver lining in what could have turned into something ugly.