Red light, Green Light, Stall!

Do I have a story for you lovely people out there! This is the tale of a young girl attempting to drive a massive F-150 stick shift. Our tale begins after leaving work yesterday. Casey had a basketball game early yesterday morning and offered to pick me up afterward so we could carpool to work. So when entering the parking garage after work, he asked if I wanted to drive the truck back to my apartment. Now remember folks, I have only had 2 lessons on the truck and only one of those was on an actual road (quite, non-traffic road at a business park on Sunday). I thought about it for a second but I realized…how hard could it be? After all, I have driven on a road before. Of course, the fact that it would be 5:00 traffic completely slipped my mind.

I got out of the parking garage with ease. I looked like a pro! It basically went down hill after that though. I made it up the front dive doing a great job. Then we reached the first stop light where Casey pointed out we were on a slight incline so I needed to be careful. No one was behind me (thank goodness) and when the light turned green, I did what I thought I needed to do but ended up rolling backwards and stalling. Oh, and I missed the green light completely. It was at that point that we realized that when Casey was saying “give more clutch” I was pushing it in more (comparing the statement to “give it more gas”) but he really wanted me to ease up off the clutch. By now, there are cars behind me. Sweet little Jennifer who works in Special events was the unlucky car that ended up behind me. I just kept telling myself “you cannot roll into the back of your co-works car, that will just look bad.” I made it though the light this time. Unfortunately, we hit another red light. Once again, Jennifer was behind me so I had to make it through the light. Of course, I couldn’t make 2 lights in a row though so once again I stalled, yelled a little but eventually made it through. Two more lights to go to get to my apartment. The next one was green but the last one was red. I was now seriously dreading having to stop AGAIN. At least Jennifer was now safe from my stalling but a new man took her place and was behind me. This time, I stalled to the point where we completely missed the green light. I said some choice words that I will not include in the blog. In the rear-view mirror I saw the guy laughing behind me. At least was good humored about the situation. One more stall at the gate to my apartments and then I was home. Frustrated and embarrassed, but home. So, out of 4 lights on my way home, I stalled at 3, and missed 2 green lights completely. Oh and did I mention that the whole drive home, I couldn’t find 3rd gear if my life depended on it…that was fun.

I was not happy when I walked into my apartment and Casey asked if I was ok. I just shouted to him from my bedroom that I hate being bad at things. Apparently, Casey and I have this in common.

To end on a good note, Casey made me drive his truck again down to get my mail. I have found what I am good at though. I am a pro at going in reverse!