Driving Stick Shift in America

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“Where are my car keys?”

We don’t use them to open the door and start the car anymore, because of digital point-and-start buttons. Even cellphones. There was an ad about a woman inside the house, opening the car door from her phone, scaring the husband who was outside, next to it. What car was it? Never mind. I’m not in the market for a new car. Digital buttons or not, film directors are not perturbed. They still make movies about that line: Where are my car keys?

Once upon a time, we learned how to drive on a manual car that had five gears. I believe they call it ‘stick shift’ in Canada and U.S. There’s a belief that they don’t know how to drive manual transmission cars in those countries. Far from it, millions of Canadians and Americans know how to press down the clutch and move to gears 1-2-3-4-5.

Monday is the beginning of the week, but it is like driving a manual car. There are seven days and all of them are different despite the fact that they are monotonous. Monday traffic is high density in all cities globally; the person that greets you at the front desk is the same; meetings are the same; customers from hell are the same and the boss is the same.

However, life is like stick shift gears 1-2-3-4-5 but, I don’t want to dwell on earlier gears of my life. The transmission from 3-4 was particularly rough, but I’m settled now. I can’t complain because other people did not survive 3-4. It’s even worse for the youth. Some of them don’t survive 1-2, because of their phones.

Nonqaba waka Msimang

Blogger Without Borders


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