Sticking with my Shift

In the last year not one but three people have asked me why, at my age, I continue to drive a manual transmission car when there are so many excellent new automatic shift cars.

New cars feature signals to tell you if you are wandering out of your lane. There are beeps to give you warnings about how you are applying the brake and if you are not braking quickly enough, the car will stop for you.

I was sort of offended, especially on the age thing, but my reasons for sticking with stick sounded lame even to me. I answered that I get better mileage and that its safer to have the added acceleration it gives small cars when entering highways. I think newer cars have overcome these issues.

So I have come up with the argument that studies show adding technologically advanced safety warnings makes drivers less attentive. Drivers tend to let the car make decisions for them. (My son told me he feels that way.) I think that we need to be even more attentive not less as we age as drivers. I feel like the more I have done for me the less I do for myself.

This is strange coming from a person who adores most laborsaving devices. Dishwashers are a gift from the gods and I could but don’t want to live without a microwave, self-cleaning oven or a frost-free refrigerator. (I do live with one of those and I hate it.)
Currently I am looking into buying Roomba vacuum cleaner. What could be more fun than watching a little robot cleaning my floors?

But to get back to the car thing …

There is something even stronger than safety keeping me driving my manual car. It’s an art or a skill I have mastered and I am proud of it.

There is nostalgia involved. As a little girl, my father let me help drive his truck. I would shift the floor gears while he manned the clutch. I was thrilled.

Then there are the happy memories of the boys in high school and college who loved teaching me the finer arts of stick shift in their bargain clunkers, although I do remember one who had a red convertible with fins.

Anyway, I learned how to listen to the engine and how to let it tell me when to shift. Never to ride the clutch, I mastered the nerve-wracking skill of waiting on a hill and shifting without backing into the guy behind me. I can rent a car in Europe without paying premium prices for automatic.

And then there is my very satisfying memory of taking my car to have it washed and being paged from the waiting room because none of the men knew how to drive it on to the cleaning ramp.

So it makes me feel like a bit of a jock.

Allow me my small pleasures, please.