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I had to learn to drive a stick because my Dad's S-10 pickup was stick. He worked nights so the truck was home all day. It was either drive a stick, or don't drive, so I learned fast. I was always afraid of stopping on an incline with a car behind me. I'd get so scared of rolling back into the car that I'd stall the engine six times before I got moving.
No real fears (outside of the fears of driving stick as Eastern Roamer mentioned), but the first time my dad let me drive in an empty parking lot I confused the column shifter for the blinker. Thankfully he stopped me before I did anything stupid. Don't know why I got them backwards. Just nervous, I guess.
I could probably say that the age and kind of car probably influenced the experience. I had a 12-year old Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera that was at the end of its rope. It would stall while I was turning corners, and the power steering and brakes would shut off.
My ash tray was also wired into the dash because it fell out, What a junk car. Miss it, though.
i first learned to drive, on a rotation of an old Ford tractor, a newer New Holland tractor, a suzuki 160 quadrunner, a suzuki 280 king quad, a Kawasaki Bayou 220, a mid-80's 15' Glastron inboard/outboard with V4 Mercruiser, and a 1974 Kayot 24' pontoon boat.
when i turned 15 i had the luxury of cruising around town in a beige 1990 Ford Explorer that was on its last days, which i guess was my "first car". Driving on the road did not seem any less safe than boats, tractors, or 4wheelers, so it was not a huge adjustment. I remember being mostly excited about having full dominion over the A/C and the radio.
After the Explorer died, my parents got into some kind of fight -- which strangely resulted in my mother buying me a brand new Ford Ranger, just to spite my dad. So while the Ranger was being built, I borrowed a 1995 Ford Contour from the dealership for a few months, during which time I'm fairly certain that I set the unofficial Lee County, SC land speed record.
I learned at 12 yrs of age. My father was a superintendent of a large housing job. He gave me my own key and I drove around the job. A few months later I often drove to the bank to deposit his paycheck.
My most vivid memory is being my Dad's 1965 Chevy pickup, three-on-the-tree shifting, and him screaming at me; "Clutch, clutch, clutch!!!" And then a whole bunch of cuss words I can't put here. Needless to say, I learned how to drive stick and still do to this day (3 decades later).
Man it seemed like yesterday that I was just learning to drive in my mom's old Buick... what a hunk of junk that thing was. It was a very comfortable car but that is about all it had going for it. My mom had the odd idea of teaching me to drive backwards in almost every situation because she believed that would make me a much better driver when going forward. She also had me parallel park every single day for a month until I could get it down perfectly.
And thank goodness for that because when it came time to take my driving test I was testing on parallel parking and breezed right through it. I remember how hard it was to hide the smirk that was trying to break across my face after completing that maneuver in less than a minute, haha!
Unfortunately upon passing the driving test on my first try I experienced something Jeremy Clarkson mentioned in one of his articles a couple years ago--a kind of blind euphoria that translated everything the mostly neutral statements that the DMV officer made into something much more in tune with what I wanted to hear. "Congratulations" turned into "WOW" and "you've passed" into "you are the single greatest driver I have ever had the opportunity to test, here is your Super licence".
So not long after that my dad was nice enough to buy me my first car, it wasn't anything too fancy though since he wasn't exactly making six figures. Well, a couple months later I would wrap the front end of it around a large tree after hitting the driver's portion of the hood head on at about 70mph because I had this notion in my head that I'm too good to drive with the traction control settings on and far too proficient to adhere to the 35mph speed limit on that small road.
In my opinion some people can only learn things the hard way and I was one of those people. So despite the fact that I nearly died that day (I thankfully kept my seat belt on), when I look back on the experience I'm glad that it happened. It was humiliating, frightening and enlightening all at the same time--it really knocked my ego down quite a few notches and taught me that I don't actually know anything about driving.
On a side partially-related-to-this-topic note, parents, please do NOT ever buy your kids a car. Ever. They'll never appreciate it like they will if they have to work their asses off to get one. Don't ask me how I know.
My father got me 1974 LTD in 1983. I drove it well. It had a brake problem though. Every once in a while the brake pedal would suddenly be easy to push all the way to the floor before the brakes would catch. My father would not believe me. I ended up learning to pump the brakes to build up enough pressure to get the brakes to work. Thankfully, he finally traded it for an 82 Lynx before any crash happened. I never did find out what was wrong.
my dad 1984 jeep cherokee it had a GM 2.8 2-bbl and a chrysler 3 speed tranny and amc 4x4 system I was 6 and my grandfather had a huge orchard that had about an acre and half of gravel road from the main road to his house. I decided to cut through the row of cherry trees and ripped up all the grass and busted a in ground sprinkler head lets just say I was grounded
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