My Hooptie
My car broke down a couple of weeks ago for the last time. I donated it to charity and bought a clunker for an irresistible price. The cash-for-clunkers program made it near-miraculous to find a cheap used car, so I jumped on this one.
I can live with the absence of air conditioning, sound system, front grill, and locks. I accept the windsheild wipers turning on whenever I accelerate, the trunk refusing to latch until I've slammed it two or three times, and the lining of the ceiling drooping down on my head like a hat. It is indisputably the worst car I have ever owned, but all these things remind me how much money I'm saving. That makes me feel good.
The problem is the stick shift. I was not prepared for the intensity of resentment a manual transmission would inspire in me.
Over the course of a trip, with each stall-- with each lurch-- with each tire-screeching takeoff-- I change gears with progressively less attention. I actually fantasize about the damage I'm doing to my car. Why? Because I am acting out a fantasy in which I am torturing the vehicle for its rebellion. In fact, I feel like I am the one rebelling, through my refusal to participate in its unreasonable demands. I mutter "I will not be subject to my own property!" over and over.
Every time I drive, I feel angry exhaustion, as if I had just been in an argument that escalated into an emotional tirade. It's unhealthy, so I hope that soon our relationship will enter the stage of resigned despair, where nobody is mad because their expectations are so low. Maybe I should marry it.
I understand that manual transmissions have their fans. I know many of them! I've had this conversation several times in the past week. But whatever benefits they claim to find, are located in that point in the middle of the clutch pedal's range of motion. You know the one. The one where the precise amount of acceleration has to happen with precision timing. It is a microscopic distance, bordered on the one side by stalling, and on the other by lurching. I do not believe I will ever hit that spot consistently.
Do you know why? Because I don't care. I could do it if I wanted to! How talented you are at something is usually a function of how interested you are in it. Trivial efficiencies are not important enough to make it worthwhile to achieve an astronaut-like level of piloting skill. The efficiencies are outweighed by tedium, discomfort, and distraction.
It's not that I can't drive stick. It's that I resent minutiae in every sphere of life. I resent being required to act like a mindless machine; to do things that machines should be doing. I've got too much of that right now. This is one source of minutiae against which it is OK to express a full range of emotion. If you are a stick shift fan, I apologize for disparaging your life choices.
I can live with the absence of air conditioning, sound system, front grill, and locks. I accept the windsheild wipers turning on whenever I accelerate, the trunk refusing to latch until I've slammed it two or three times, and the lining of the ceiling drooping down on my head like a hat. It is indisputably the worst car I have ever owned, but all these things remind me how much money I'm saving. That makes me feel good.
The problem is the stick shift. I was not prepared for the intensity of resentment a manual transmission would inspire in me.
Over the course of a trip, with each stall-- with each lurch-- with each tire-screeching takeoff-- I change gears with progressively less attention. I actually fantasize about the damage I'm doing to my car. Why? Because I am acting out a fantasy in which I am torturing the vehicle for its rebellion. In fact, I feel like I am the one rebelling, through my refusal to participate in its unreasonable demands. I mutter "I will not be subject to my own property!" over and over.
Every time I drive, I feel angry exhaustion, as if I had just been in an argument that escalated into an emotional tirade. It's unhealthy, so I hope that soon our relationship will enter the stage of resigned despair, where nobody is mad because their expectations are so low. Maybe I should marry it.
I understand that manual transmissions have their fans. I know many of them! I've had this conversation several times in the past week. But whatever benefits they claim to find, are located in that point in the middle of the clutch pedal's range of motion. You know the one. The one where the precise amount of acceleration has to happen with precision timing. It is a microscopic distance, bordered on the one side by stalling, and on the other by lurching. I do not believe I will ever hit that spot consistently.
Do you know why? Because I don't care. I could do it if I wanted to! How talented you are at something is usually a function of how interested you are in it. Trivial efficiencies are not important enough to make it worthwhile to achieve an astronaut-like level of piloting skill. The efficiencies are outweighed by tedium, discomfort, and distraction.
It's not that I can't drive stick. It's that I resent minutiae in every sphere of life. I resent being required to act like a mindless machine; to do things that machines should be doing. I've got too much of that right now. This is one source of minutiae against which it is OK to express a full range of emotion. If you are a stick shift fan, I apologize for disparaging your life choices.