for
5/19/2001
This is for those of you who like stick shifts. You like the control.
To ridicule you now would be too kind.
No no, now is the time to step in and say that I've joined your little user's group, shooting the nicotine of car control as if that superfluous third lever on the floor was a pump control, and we a bunch of lab rats. But I'm not one of you. Not really. I don't enjoy it.
There was a time, when I was learning to drive, that I drove on "the stick." I could do it then. That was then. Then we got an automatic, and it became my commuting car. I lost the clutching gift of Cthulhu, and became a good driver. When the radio mysteriously started working again, and I didn't have to belt out Aladdin tunes at 60 miles an hour, I'd imagine I became an even better driver.
Then I had the Toyota, the automatic, sold out from under me, and got a weekend to learn to "stick" myself to work in the morning. So be it.
This time around, there were no shrill, excitable parents beside me in the car--just me, at 20, grinding a gearbox and stalling out--only smarter, now, older and a faster learner.
The smooth glide in to work over that mystical mountain became a precisely-timed game of zen against a useless, obsolete trannie system.
But this is about you.
I know all about you "control" addicts. You're no longer stuck in traffic with nothing to do; it's quite a complicated process, getting through the stop-'n-go streets. That speed limit's still the same, just more fun to get to. You have something to do--that's the point--while you're driving. (Unless you're on the hiway.) At very least, you saved a few bucks when you bought the car--certainly more than you'll waste on gas. Hopefully.
This is not the promise of the automobile.
Zip! I'm there. That's what it's for. Remember?
Can't afford the automatic transmission? Do something while you're in stop and go traffic. When buying, scrimp on the radio. When driving, learn to sing.
Because the future is now.
Because the rest of your life is here.
Because, driving a stick, you're not getting there any faster.
Touch the Toast