Last week, a friend took me out in his truck to give me a lesson in how to drive a manual transmission. I will be flying to Minneapolis in a few weeks to pick up my new car--which is a stick--and I figured it would be good if I knew how to drive it.
But I consistently did two things wrong. Like all beginners, I often let up on the clutch too quickly. The other mistake: slamming the gear shift around. I think my friend was worried about me going from first to second followed by the gear shift being ripped out of the floor.
As I thought about this in the days that followed, I made a realization. Perhaps it happened when watching an episode of Magnum, P.I., the show I watch daily during lunch. My slamming of the gear shift came from watching all these cop shows (e.g. Magnum or Rockford). Whenever there is a chase scene, and the cars have a standard transmission, the shifter is thrown around hard to stress the urgency of the situation. As I discovered at the high school parking lot last week, actually driving a stick is NOT like that.
Now if only I can pull a U-turn like on TV...
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1 comment:
How funny!
It's very rare in the Uk that we learn on anything but stick shift...problem I had in the US was trying to find the clutch and then realising it was not there!
All the best, am sure you'll have loads more fun practicing
Emma
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