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It was a few months before I turned 16, I had a car waiting for me once I got my license (1982 Toyota Starlet courtesy of an older sister who had moved onto other wheels) and life was going pretty well. The only slight problem I could see was that my car had a manual transmission and I only knew how to drive an automatic.
But, I had been practicing with my imaginary clutch and gas petal on the passenger side of the car ever since my sister first got the car. I also knew how to shift the gears because my sister would let me shift for her when she was in a good mood. Okay, so I didn’t get THAT much practice at it but I am a quick learner.
The only thing making me nervous was that my dad was going to be the one to teach me to drive the standard. My mom refused to teach anyone else how to drive after my sister almost killed us all when she was learning. So that left me with dad, who is a cop and drives like a cop but expects you to drive like Ms Perfect Driver.
It was show time, my dad was off of work and I was going to drive him to the gas station about 3 miles away. In theory, it sounds pretty easy.
I put the car in gear and went to start our adventure and promptly spun rocks and dug into the gravel driveway. My dad hates it when people do this to his driveway. He kept his cool but told me very firmly to take my time. So, I tried it again…..and spun out again.
Somehow I finally made it to the end of the driveway with only a handful of spinouts and only a perturbed (not angry) dad. I thought things were going pretty well. By the time we made down the gravel road to the actual black top road, I had mastered first gear. Unfortunately, I was informed that I was not going to drive all the way to the gas station in first gear.
After moving on from the stop sign (its much easier with no gravel) I attempted to go into second gear, which was pretty easy, until I let off the clutch.
We started rocking back and forth violently and there was another car coming on the other side of the street so I pushed the clutch back in to stop the rocking. It worked! But now I had to start all over again from a stop. So, I go through first like a pro and go onto second…..and the violent rocking starts again. Like the rocking in the car (which I KNOW is not supposed to be happening) isn’t enough, I have dad over in the passenger seat yelling at me to “give it gas.” So I give it a little bit of gas but nothing happens. He’s still yelling at me so I stomped on the gas pedal. It worked but now the damn car was sounding like it might keel over. He fussed at me to shift to third. I did and everything sounded much more normal. Until we came to the next stop sign…..can we all guess what happened when I took off from the stop sign???
Lucky for me, there were no more stop signs on the way to the gas station. But there was a right turn in which I apparently went just a smidgen into the other lane during the turn. Well holy cow, from the yelling that went on in the car you would think that I just ran over a small child or something (note to self: stay in your lane NO MATTER WHAT.)
When we finally got to the gas station, I calmly pulled next to the pump, got out, stood at the back of the car and got a severe nosebleed. My dad came back from paying for the gas, accessed the nosebleed and then had the nerve to ask me when I would be ready to drive back!!! As if I was ever going to drive HIM around in the car again!!!
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