Visualizing and Stick-shift Cars

This is for a traditional car---if you look below, you'll see my VW has a different configuration.

I was reading an article on Snopes about a POW who played golf in his head for 7 years. When he was released, he played a better game than he'd ever played before. Studies have been done that the brain "doesn't know any difference in actually practicing something or mentally practicing something." It's called visualization. I've tried to teach it to my reading students for many years. I can attest to it working with me and a stick-shift car.

As a teen-ager, my parents did what most parents in the 1960's did, they found a "rust bucket" for their children to drive. My first car was a Studebaker we called "The Roach", but my second car was "The Green Bomb". I don't remember the model, but it was green, had a muffler that fell off with some regularity, windshield wipers that didn't work when I used the gas pedal, heat only when two wires were clipped together. AND, it was a stick shift on the column!

I can remember the dread of stopping on hills---the fear of rolling backwards or screaming forward if I gave the car too little or too much gas when taking off. Once, my friend/cousin Susan had to get on the floor and help me operate the pedals with horns honking behind us.

Then, I went through a period when I didn't have to drive a stick-shift. Anytime I was with someone with one, I'd watch them and go over the process in my head. I did this for several years: watching and practicing. When I married, one of our cars (like the Volvo pictured above but in a mustard gold color) was a stick-shift and it was like hitting a hole in one! I could drive it with no effort!

Since then, I've heard that boys drive stick shift cars easier than girls because they pretend to drive cars, make the shifting sounds of the motor as children. I think Eli will be an Ace driver! He has been doing this since he could barely stand!