real women drive stick

Making it up as I go along. As I found a new home in the driver seat for the first time in my parents red Toyota truck extended cab, now my father sits in my regular spot in the passenger seat. But he is no passenger. And I am no driver.

Driving. I had to make it up as I went along. I think the driving, the driving is tough but you add to the equation of puberty rite of passages-a stick shift, your father, and sweat dripping down your back. Well that is not a pretty site. As I drove and continued to listen and remember the book manual of how to drive and the class I took, my dad begins slowly to bark the orders. The push and pull of the clutch and my foot and the balance of the brake and gas, I wish I had another foot. Just to drive with. Too many balls in the air to juggle at 15 and a half with the pressure of success and the start and stop and hydraulics of cars left to the LBC or rappers or low riders. They look cool in the mtv music videos when mtv actually played videos and not exclusively reality tv junk food. But my dad isn’t amused at the soundtrack of let me ride in the background, he is more the baseball game or oldies or sixty drug music more his style.

Kate do it again. I start and stop and jerk. Shit. This is much harder than I thought. He starts to get louder as he barks. Just make this car go. Go. Without the killing. Of the gas. Again. Again. I push in the clutch and begin, begin the gas to overpower at first. I feel the drips of sweat becoming a waterfall, my father is yelling too much gas. I can’t do this I start to let go of the gas, the gas until the clutch comes slowly open as my book. Slowly it is happening, the yelling, the driving, I am in first but the second part is coming more easily. Shift he yells. I ram my foot into the clutch again. Moving more with less resistance on the stream of my driving. I am going now not a rapid white water rafting pace but going nonetheless. The sweat is still there. How to stop. How to go. And stop at the same time.

I am thankful for my learning how to drive stick. Stick in a world where most women don’t. It like the typing classes I took in public schools- it might be some of the best skills given to me in jr. high and high school. Other than how not to get my ass beat or asked to dances or how to get elected to something and get away with drinking at dances and tping all the popular kids houses. I knew those well too.

It wasn’t until my ass had parked itself in the driver seat of a BMW, my usual home of the Toyota Corolla automatic. I open the sunroof and the windows and drive with power and control and juice and control and more power than I was used to. I am more thankful than ever I could drive stick so I could inherit my employer’s car for a moment or moments.

As I drive up the hills, there is an acceleration and movement of before but now older, older I am. Sweat is gone. Father isn’t next to me. But still with me. It is like riding a bike. I had forgotten the fun of the newness of it. Of new toys. Of new things. Until. I drove stick again. Again up the hill. I like the going but the stopping and parking. Parking. Standing still- I am still working on and making it up as I go along.