Introduction
Adrienne D., Knoxville, TN
My driver’s education began in my father’s Honda civic, as I sat squished in his lap in the seat clutching the wheel, my right foot alternating between the gas and the brake, my right hand on the stick shift, while he negotiated the clutch with his left foot. I may have been 8, or 10 at the most, and he told me that it was time to learn how to drive. He grew up navigating his uncle’s tractor on the chicken farm in new jersey, and although I was unlikely to end up on a farm, he told me I needed to know how to use a standard gear in case I was ever stranded with a broken down vehicle and had to use the nearest rental car (or farm equipment) in order to get home. We would drive around the parking lot of pharmacies or supermarkets as I worked up a sweat struggling to turn the non- power steering wheel in order to make a circular turn, but I could feel the gears slide into place as I moved the stick, and whenever I pushed the gas pedal down ever so slightly the car sped up like magic, propelling me forward towards independence.
I couldn’t wait to get my driver’s license, and once I did I took every chance I could get to drive my father’s Honda Civic hatchback. I earned the title “craziest driver” for my high school superlative, which was a misnomer, because I was actually the safest driver out of all my peers. I think I gained such notoriety because I loved driving that stick shift and it showed. Downshifting as I neared the bends, and then deftly shifting up to accelerate so the change of gears was barely noticeable as the car sped up, the RPM needle indicated the engine’s responsiveness, and I felt in complete control of my destiny.
My first few cars were gifts, and therefore the cheapest hand me downs, grandparent automatics. But the first car I bought with my own money was a blue Honda Civic hatchback. I loved the great gas mileage, the feeling of mobile confidence as I shifted up and down maneuvering the machinery, and the general sense that this is the way cars are supposed to be experienced, viscerally.
Now that I am in my forty’s, as I backed my Volvo station wagon with 248,000 miles out of my driveway one day and chugged off to gather my children, I contemplated how long my current vehicle might last, and realized that I may be in a small, and possibly shrinking, cohort of women stick shift drivers. When I peered further into this subculture, I discovered there are a majority of women who have settled into the kid minivan motif, and many others who have ended up with automatic cars for one reason or another. But, when I started to question women, those that drive stick shifts lit up with a fire in their eyes. They thanked me for asking them, they sent in stories of early tractor maneuvering and defiant female mechanical wisdom. Most of them are militantly loyal to their standard shifts. Women connected driving a stick shift with competence, control and an entry into the male world of dominance. But instead of being dominated by someone else, they were governing their own bodies and space, a supreme joy. I wondered if there was one identifiable variety of woman who defined her relationship with motorized independence in terms of the mechanics of her engine, but my informal polling turned up so many different genres. When one friend asked me, “Is there a type” who drives a stick shift, I decided that the voices of stick shift sisters would speak for themselves.