If I had been born 50 years earlier, this post would have been simply titled "Driving"...however, having learned to drive in the late 1990s, being able to drive stick is not the "standard" anymore.
I learned to drive on my family's Caravan minivan and my grandmother's Sunfire. From there I moved on to drive a scooter, many cube trucks and panel vans, the occasional pick-up truck, and many many many rental cars. Still, when I sit in the driver's seat with a stick shift beside me, I get nervous: it feels like too many parts of my body to coordinate...eyes, ears, both hands, both feet. I clench my stomach when I have to start on an incline, and I get nervous when the car behind me is following too closely.
My husband and I own a standard car...it came with him as part of the package :) He started giving me lessons while we were planning a road trip to Florida a few moths after we met. He'd drive us down to somewhere without many cars, and I'd practice going around the block, stopping and starting, shifting between gears, and practicing reversing. Then we went on the trip, and I actually did pretty well with the highway driving: not a lot of stop and go, if you plan your routes well! Since then (over two years ago), I haven't done much practicing...but now we're planning another road trip to the New Jersey, New York, and Massachusetts, so I need to get back on the horse so to speak!
I realize, logically, that I just need to practice. I also realize that thousands of people drive a stick shift and it is unlikely that I am going to cause any major damage to other cars or people by simply rolling back a little on a hill. Although it's still hard to unclench my stomach, I know that one day I will just think of it as "driving", and not "driving standard".
