Plain and Precious

I used to have trouble driving a manual transmission. This issue was probably because when I was a teenager I didn’t have a car with a manual transmission at my disposal to drive. In fact, I rarely had a car at my disposal at all. If I needed to go somewhere, I would usually ride my bike, or walk. During college I drove my mom’s old Corolla that had an automatic transmission. Occasionally someone would ask me to drive their cars with manual transmissions, and I would struggle. The worst was getting stuck in the intersection without being able to keep from killing the engine. People behind you are honking, people to your sides are laughing, the dang light is turning yellow, and if you don’t get your act together soon it’s going to be whiplash gang up time at the amusement park bumper car ride of your youth all over again. My heart would start racing and I’d get so nervous that instead of letting out the clutch smoothly, I would end up stomping on it like the bass petal of a drum set. At that moment, when I would look down at my leg and realize that I no longer had any control over it, the look on my face can only be described as the same look that Dr. Emmitt Brown had when he saw the tree branch fall and disconnect the lightning harnessing power line that, if not reconnected in the next five seconds, wouldn’t boost the Delorean into time travel but strand Marty McFly in the year 1955. Great Scott! The lowest point of my manual transmission education came when I had to drop my brother off at school and got stranded in an intersection on the south side of Chicago. I thought I was going to die, but luckily was able to peel out of there and make it home alive. Once that old Corolla started to teeter, I decided I needed a new car and the one I wanted had a manual transmission. I went to a parking lot to practice and took a buddy of mine along for the ride. After killing it a few times, my friend got frustrated and said, “Look, just do it like this”, and then made a motion with his hands, one representing the gas and the other the clutch. For some reason, that little lesson made driving with a transmission click in my brain and I’ve been able to do it ever since. I recently had a similar experience. My doctor recently prescribed pills for me to take. (Refer to a past post.) I’ve always had issues with pills, probably because I’ve rarely had to take any. I was talking with a coworker during lunch one day and told her of my predicament. After laughing at me for about 5 minutes, she looked at me and said, “Look, just do it like this”. After watching her swallow her own pill, something in my brain just clicked, and I’ve been able to swallow pills ever since. Occasionally one of my horse pills will go down sideways and the panic will begin to rise in my stomach, but overall it’s been smooth sailing. Thank goodness for plain and simple lessons that just click!