For the past year or so I’ve been driving what I like to call The Husband’s car. You might recall, I used to drive a 20 year old Subaru Legacy Wagon that was on its last legs. The Husband and I eventually decided that I should start driving my Husband’s Subaru Impreza as a way to wean me off my 20 year old vehicle.
Little Red, as we call it – the van is Big Red – is a manual car. When we first bought it in 2012, the Husband very much wanted a manual car. I had never driven a manual car before we got Little Red. I remember my parents driving them when I was growing up. And then when it came time to buy my first car we thought about getting a manual car because it was cheaper, but my mother, who was car shopping with me, couldn’t remember how to drive a stick shift, so we went with an automatic. I had a friend/ work colleague who drove me home after rehearsals a lot and she had a manual car. She said something that really stayed with me. She told me her father had insisted she and her siblings learn to drive manual cars because he didn’t ever want them to be stuck somewhere and unable to get home because they didn’t know how to drive a stick shift.
When we got Little Red, the Husband taught me how to drive. It was rough learning. I remember I used to drive around the neighborhood in the middle of the day when there was no traffic, just so I could practice.
Anyhow, I wouldn’t say I’m amazingly smooth at driving a manual car, even after 12 years. Just earlier this year I had to call the Husband to get the car out of a parking spot in front of the pre-school because I had parked on a bit of a downward hill and was too close to the car in front of me. I had tried for ten minutes to pull the car out, but I couldn’t get the right rhythm of releasing the clutch and reversing without the car rolling. (Okay, side note – I found this really annoying – the guy who owned the car in front of me at one point came out of his house and came up to look at his rear bumper. I’m guessing he was making sure I hadn’t hit his car. Then he went back into his house. I really wanted to ask him just to move his car forward so I could have a bit of extra breathing space to pull my car out.).
Despite all that, I’m really glad that I learned how to do it. One thing I like about driving a manual car is that it keeps my mind engaged; I have to be very mindful of what I’m doing and the circumstances around me. No wool gathering while I drive.
Because of having to really think about what I’m doing while I drive, and also because I’ve sat in a lot of rush hour traffic the past few years, I often find myself contemplating how things I think about while driving also can apply to life. Here are some life lessons I’ve realized while driving Little Red.
Leave lots of space. The thing with a manual car is that if you don’t shift correctly, the car will often roll back or lurch forward. Also you can’t really stop it as quickly as you can an automatic car. Well, I guess you can, but it’s really unpleasant – stopping the car quickly is a bit of a mental shift for me (clutch or brake? or both?), and it can be very jarring if I don’t do it right. So I’ve learned that when driving it’s good to leave space so I don’t have to do anything too suddenly if I don’t have to. In life too, it’s good to leave room in case you want to roll something back or if you need to stop suddenly. Don’t pack life so close that you can’t do those things.
Give people grace – you might not know what’s going on. I feel like people who don’t drive manual cars don’t really understand the multi-step process that driving a manual car takes. There have been many times when I’ve stalled the car at a stop sign or stop light, and then people honk at me when I don’t move quickly enough for their tastes. I really hate being honked at while trying to restart my car. Or once time, I had someone come up to me and say, “I think your parking brake is on” when really I was on an incline and having a bit of difficulty getting the rhythm of releasing the clutch and gunning the accelerator. The nice young man meant well – when he realized that I was driving a manual car, he apologized. These days, when the light turns green and the car in front of me doesn’t go immediately, I remind myself to be patient because it might be because the driver has stalled their car, like I’ve done many times. Everyone deserves grace over aggressive car honking be it at a stop light or any other time in life.
Related – ignore the honking and concentrate on the task at hand. When I’ve stalled and there’s a long line of cars behind me, I start to get a little anxious, feeling bad for holding up traffic. And when the honking starts, it compounds my anxiety. But then I have to take a deep breath, tune out all the noise and just concentrate on getting the car started again. I channel this concentration often at work – when I have a particularly difficult sequence to call, I can’t let myself be distracted by everything going on around me – I focus on the music and the cues and hone on in what needs to be done. Silence the internal and external critics because I know how to get the car started, the show on, my child to calm down. There is strength in knowing what to do.
Slow and steady beats fast and jerky. When I’m in rush hour traffic, I’ve learned that it’s better put the car in 2nd gear and go slowly and consistently than be constantly shifting into a higher gear and accelerating to match the stop and go pace of the cars around me. Sure I could move a little faster if, but then I inevitably will have to stop or downshift when I get too close to the car in front of me; constantly speeding up and slowing down is tiring and more often than not I end up stalling the car because I don’t shift fast enough. Like the tortoise, it’s better to go at a consistent slower pace. There is no need to rush. Rushing takes a lot more mental energy and will just make me frustrated when I have to slow down anyway. I think of this in regards to my career- I sometimes feel jealous of people whose careers move in leaps and bounds. But I have to remind myself that I am the head of my department because I climbed the ladder slowly and didn’t let myself get burnt out by moving to big projects too quickly.
Listening is important. There are some standard speeds for when to shift, but it’s also important to listen to the car as well. If it sounds like the car is working too hard, it often means I’m in the wrong gear and need to shift. Listening is such an important part of figuring out where things need to be – I find this is also true with people.
Sometimes you just need to be neutral. Okay, this one is actually a pretty terrible habit while driving stick shift – I probably put the car into neutral when going downhill more than I should. So this is perhaps not a good metaphor, but it’s something I often think about when shifting to neutral. You have to be in neutral when the car is at a stop light or the car will stall. (Unless you keep your foot on the clutch, but that’s not a great habit either.) Often when I’m sitting in neutral, I think about what “being neutral” means in life – when is it best to take a step back and observe in order to keep the engine of things going? Also – I have a terrible poker face so my face is very rarely in neutral.
But…. You can’t go uphill in neutral. Something that goes hand in hand with that last point. I’m still not the best at starting the car on an incline – Any tips for me? – but I have learned through trial and error that you can’t go uphill in neutral, though you can go downhill. How true is that for so many things? To move forward and make progress you need to put the car in a gear – be bold, make decisions. Not taking a stand can often lead to being idle or backsliding, or just gunning the accelerator unnecessarily. On that note – don’t gun the accelerator unless you know what gear you’re in. To climb mountains you need to be in the right gear and give things the right push at the right time.
I don’t know how long we’ll have a manual car. The oldest will learn to drive in a few years and while I like the idea of her learning to drive a manual car, it seems impractical. The current car is 13 years old, but it still runs well (Thank you, Subaru). Either way, I’m glad Little Red is in our life and that it has made me contemplate so many things in life.
Did you ever learn to drive a manual car? What is the best advice you’ve been given about driving? What do you think about when driving? When do you feel like you most need grace? Are you good at being in neutral?
My high school boyfriend tried to teach me to drive stick, and I almost blew up his engine by shifting into first instead of third or fourth or something. I have blocked out the whole experience. He never let me drive his car again after that. It was just as well. I stalled it out so many times that I was having some kind of PTSD every time I got into the car. So much honking.
The honking is the WORST! I hate it when people honk. I think your boyfriend was very brave to try to teach you – it’s such a nebulous thing, I think.
I was horrid at driving a manual car. We live in a town with hills and what a nightmare. We now only have automatic cars and I think in an emergency I could get from Point A to Point B but I would definitely stall it a lot.
I do wish I were fully comfortable driving a 5-speed, but it’s not worth the stress to me to learn (and now we don’t have a manual car which I mostly just had my husband drive in the past).
I loved this post, BTW and will try to remember to link to it in my Happy Things Friday post.
Oooh living somewhere hilly would be a nightmare. I have a friend who takes the long way to work in her manual car to avoid this one stop sign at the top of a hill.
I relate to this so much. My entire system for navigating my hilly home town is still based on avoiding stoplights and stop signs while going uphill because I learned to drive on my mother’s manual car. I have never visited the grocery store closest to my parent’s house because it has a small, hilly, parking lot and I feared exactly the parking situation you describe. It taught me to just buy manual cars because I will avoid tricky situations through extreme inefficiency rather than practicing and improving. My first car of my own was a beloved used Subaru Legacy wagon, which lasted 23 years until it rusted out. I miss that car so much! Even at the end when the electrical system was completely on the fritz and the speedometer rarely worked I would rather drive it than a manual.