Dad's Impact on Our Love of Cars: Learning Stick

One of my favorite car blogs, Jalopnik, recently created a post asking readers to share their favorite car-related memories they had with their dad. (http://jalopnik.com/what-are-your-best-car-memories-with-dad-1782244783). I highly recommend checking out the comments section as it will no doubt remind some of you of similar experiences with your dad. Those of you that read my "About Me" and "Why We Love Cars" posts know that my dad heavily influenced my passion for cars. Reading all of the stories of people learning to drive reminded me of one of the fondest memories of my teenage years: learning how to drive stick.  Even after looking up multiple YouTube videos of people's feet working in harmony to shift with a clutch, I was still nervous as my dad pulled the Mustang into the high school parking lot. After a half-hour of awkward lurching and stalls, I eased out the clutch and successfully engaged 1st gear for the first time. Naturally, I was overcome with excitement. My dad, however, didn't think he'd have to tell me how to brake as well. With the available real estate in the parking lot running out, he said "OK, great now hit the brakes". Not thinking I would ever get this far, I fumbled with the pedals and couldn't work out in my mind which one was the brake. Instead of hitting the brake I pushed the clutch in as hard as I could. Now coasting and about 10 feet away from the curb my dad yells "BRAKE!! THE ONE IN THE MIDDLE!!!!". By the time I looked down my dad had managed to reach his leg across the center console and hit the brakes; stopping the car and narrowly avoiding disaster. To this day I don’t know how he was able to shoot the gap and fit his leg into the driver footwell, let alone with enough accuracy to hit the brakes. After this experience, most people would probably wrap it up for the day, but not my dad. Instead he tells me to get the car turned around and try again. At this point I was no longer scared because that was pretty much the worst case scenario so it didn’t take long after that to get used to the intricacies of a manual transmission. I even ended up driving home.