Stuck in Neutral

As an anniversary present, Les took my Honda down to Florida to get it painted. Its original "eggplant" clearcoat has been eaten off by both the Florida and the Tennessee sun rays, and it's only getting worse. Fearing that rust is next, we decided to invest in a new paint job before it was a total crisis situation. Les had a little time off and it seemed like the perfect opportunity to be sweet to me and also visit his mom and sister in Florida in one trip.

The bad news for me is that this leaves me driving our other car, which is a stick shift. I hate driving stick shift. I'm passable at it, but not good, and I don't feel like I'm getting any better. Getting into first is the worst. Getting into first on a hill is the worst of the worst. As a result, the sight of a red light strikes fear into my heart. The sight of a red light where I'm on a slight hill is even worse, and if a car pulls up behind me and inches ever closer to my bumper . . . well, my hands start sweating, my left knee starts shaking violently, and I am convinced I might spend the rest of my life stuck at this light, coasting back ever closer to the car foolishly hugging my rear bumper. Due to stress, I either stall out or totally squeal my tires in these situations, which only makes me more nervous and more likely to stall out again.

To make it worse, my car is the SVT model (although no one outside of Detroit probably knows what that means) so theoretically the driver of my car (me, in this case) has purchased this particular car for its low-pro tires, six-speed transmission, premium gasoline guzzling engine with 178 hp worth of performance . . . not because it's a good "learner car." It's the equivalent of seeing a muscled-out mustang with a blower, two tailpipes emitting flames, and a bumper sticker that says "Born to drag race" stalling out in front of you. Or to put it in Music City terms, it's the equivalent of going to a singer-songwriter performance and noticing that the next performer doesn't know how to tune his guitar.

Although everyone has told me that if I just drive a stick shift for two weeks, I'll become a pro before I know it, I don't know if that's really true for me. I don't feel like I'm making any improvement. Besides, maybe I'm just not meant to drive a stick shift. Maybe my body just isn't made for it (annoyingly weak left leg!).

What if this is just like playing the piano for me? I took lessons for eight years, practiced, did recitals, and at the end of the day, I'm just not good at it. Sure, I can read music and plonk things out, but I still don't understand the general concept of how chords work, how progressions progress, or what makes some notes sound better together than others. Because I'm not technically good (as in, my technique is poor) at it and I also don't understand the theory behind it, I'm just not a lover of playing the piano even this many years later. There's no joy in it for me.

So, I have to accept that I may never be good at driving a stick shift, no matter how long or how often I drive it. I am thinking about becoming a mechanic so I can at least enjoy the technical side of things. But someone might have to drive the stick shift cars I work on into the garage for me.