Recently, I managed to pick up the elusive skill of driving stick shift.  Cruising around town, I’m generally okay, but I do get quite nervous when I’m perched on an uphill with cars stopped behind me.  I am deathly afraid of rolling backwards into the car behind me before I can engage and go forward.

Yesterday, driving on Brookline by Fenway, the traffic was terrible.  I sat through 3 green-yellow-red transitions before I made it through the light at Kenmore.  The part of Brookline that goes over I-93 is quite an incline, I found.  So this was a bit problematic, made worse by the girl behind me in a Toyota Camry who became known as the “close driver”.

I felt like it was right out of a Seinfeld episode.  I’d see brake lights on the car in front of me, prompting me to step on my brakes, and I would look up into the rearview mirror, and inevitably, I would see the girl behind me inch up all the way on my bumper, leaving me with MAYBE 6 inches of space.  The brake lights in front of me would go off, I’d put the car into first with my foot still on the brake pedal … and then it’s a moment of panic as I try to see if the gas pedal can pick up the car before it rolls backwards into the close driver.  Rinse.  Repeat.  3 times before I finally made it through the light.

Now that I drive stick, I’m going to be really conscientious of how much space I leave behind the car in front of me at traffic lights, especially traffic lights perched on an incline.  That would suck to have a manual car in front of me roll back into my front bumper.