fbpx

Were You Taught to Drive a Manual?

Recently my mother took two of my children on an adventure that would keep them out of the house for 10 days in the heart of the summer. For those of you who have kids, shedding half of them for any length of time can feel like a vacation. It’s amazing how quiet our house seems. Her generosity in bringing my kids on this adventure is not why I’m writing—it’s her car, which she left parked at my house, that got me thinking.

I took the chance to drive her car around today and it put a smile on my face. See, my mom’s car has a manual transmission and manuals are fun. 

I started to wonder if people still learn to drive manual transmissions. I think they should. You don’t need to be good at it, just proficient enough to move a car safely down the road—you never know when you might need to drive a friend and their car safely home. Plus, they’re fun.

When the time comes, I expect that I will try to teach my kids to drive a manual first. Once they’ve mastered that, I figure they will be comfortable in most cars. I’ve got about seven years before my oldest learns to drive, and I wonder if they will still be making manual cars by then. I hope so, but I can’t imagine that there will be a lot of self-driving cars with a manual option

In the meantime, I guess I’ll just enjoy this one for the next week or so! I hope traffic’s not too bad, I don’t want to be the one that burns up her clutch.

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *