driving a stick shift when you're an automatic kind of girl

I've been driving Jimmy's little car for the last 3 weeks since he left Sao Paulo. When he (as the diplomat) left the country, I (as just the diplomat's wife) lost the privilege of using the special consular blue license plates. So our minivan was turned over to its new owner and Mac and I inherited the VW Gol, which is this awful little 2-door hatchback that has the bare basics. We're talking really just 4 wheels and a steering wheel in a metal box with no AC, no radio and worst of all: it's a manual transmission.

I didn't learn to drive a manual transmission until I was 30 years old in Mozambique. We bought this enormous Land Rover and Jimmy loved driving it so much. And I loved being chauffered about. I never had to make an excuse about why it was better for him to drive; I honestly didn't know how.

And then Jimmy broke his foot in a silly basketball game and suddenly, our trips to the grocery store were no more (the grocery store being in South Africa, meaning a whole 'nother country). So I had to learn; otherwise we would've starved due to lack of groceries. We loaded up one afternoon for the first lesson and there are probably still Mozambican children, now teenagers, laughing at the memory of this big red Land Rover bucking and jerking along side streets of Maputo being driven by this white woman who clearly didn't know anything. It was awful and humiliating and I clearly did not graduate driver's school on this one lesson.

Then Jimmy's dad very unexpectedly died and he returned to the US for the funeral. I remember very clearly my first attempt at driving the car by myself. I came out of the house and told our house guard to open the gate because I needed to go out. Kenny (as we called him because that was the closest to an English name that his African dialect name sounded like) blocked my path and wagged his finger no. I hate that finger-wagging thing. I told Kenny again that I needed to go out so to please open the gate. (I was going to a baby shower that I really could have walked to, but I thought this would be good short-range practice.) Kenny then proceeded to tell me that the patron was the only one who could drive the big car. I told Kenny to open the gate because the patrona was going out for a drive. What could he do but open the gate? I did get the car in reverse and backed out past the gate. The only mistake I made was turning the wheel too soon and driving over the curb instead of straight down the driveway, but this car was built for off-roading so going over the curb was no great shakes. My last memory as I drove off that day was of Kenny standing by the gate, shaking his head and I'm sure making a tsk-tsk noise.

Long story short, I learned how to drive just fine and became confident enough to drive to South Africa and around town. We sold the Land Rover and immediately went back to automatic transmission until we moved to Brasilia and Jimmy bought the little Gol. I drove it around some there and here in Sao Paulo (close to home), but after 8 years of intermittent manual transmission driving, I have maintained an unnatural fear of hills. I wish I could say of just steep hills, but we're talking any hill of any minor degree.

In the last 3 weeks, I've kept my radius limited to just a couple miles, namely as far as the consulate. Last week when I took Mac and his friends to the movies, we took a taxi primarily because it would be dark when we came home (and I hadn't driven that car in the dark too much), secondarily because I don't think that car is the safest and putting two non-related people at risk seemed burdensome, but, if I tell the truth, we also used a taxi because I was nervous about the ramps in the parking garage. What would I do if I got stuck in traffic on the ramp and couldn't get up the hill?

Let me just tell you, when you're used to going out and about in this city, limiting yourself to a 2-mile radius stinks. The other problem is that we gave away our GPS as part of the minivan sale and I had become quite dependent on our girl, so it was nerve-wracking to think about getting lost in this city. One wrong turn here can land you in some scary neighborhoods. But I started branching out more this week. Today I went to Jardins, which I said I'd never drive to in Jimmy's car. But I had the choice of trying to drive or take an expensive taxi, and my frugal tendencies won out.

So I mapped it all out on Google Maps, but our printer was packed up this week, so I had to handwrite out the directions and I couldn't print the street map out. The only part of the directions that made me nervous was that I had to go through a tunnel on Ave. Reboucas.

A basic principle: if you go down in a tunnel, you very likely must come back up eventually. So I prayed and prayed and prayed that the traffic wouldn't be stopped in this particular tunnel. I might as well have prayed that the sun rise in the west. The sun always rises in the east and the traffic is always stopped in this tunnel, and today was no exception on either account.

So then I prayed to please just let me get up the hill and out of the tunnel in one movement without having to stop. No dice. Now let me tell you that we're not talking Mt. Everest. In fact, I am the first to admit that I am literally making a mountain out of the proverbial molehill. In fact, when you're stopped on this "hill", you feel like you're on flat land. It's only because you've seen the incline from a distance that you even realize the road goes up.

Exacerbating my nerves was this white Mercedes delivery truck behind me. The driver chose to minimize the space between my rear and his front so I'm quite sure we were 2 inches apart. This was fine when we were flat and he obviously thought I was an expert driver. And he probably even thought it when we first stopped on the hill and restarted when traffic moved. I expertly shifted to first gear, had no backwards rolling and did great.

The second restart on the hill didn't go as well. I rolled backwards (didn't hit him, though) but got so nervous that I didn't very smoothly lift off the clutch and push the gas, so there was a little squealing and a little bucking of the car, but I didn't stall out. Thank God for that because I really would've just walked away from the car if that had happened. I would have called the new owner and said your car is waiting in the Reboucas tunnel. Listen for all the angry drivers honking and you'll find it.

Now I was really nervous about the guy behind me because I knew that my confidence was shaken and he stood a really good chance of getting hit by me. So I did the only thing I could think of to get him to back off a little. I turned on my hazard lights. So yes, I looked like a total driving moron but he stayed way back and I got out of the tunnel (2 more stops and starts before we got up that interminable hill). Of course, by then my hands and feet were so sweaty that I could have soaked through 3 washcloths, but I did it.

So I met my dear friend Gisele for lunch and told her that I'd meet her anywhere for lunch in the next 11 days that didn't require going through the Reboucas tunnel. I love her, but my nerves can't take it!