To Shift, or Not To Shift

As I'm sure you'll recall, my last post was about buying a new car.  I'm very happy with the new car, make no mistake.  However it's necessitated a bit of relearning on my part.  I've had to relearn how to shift.  Why, yes, it is a manual transmission.  I have, in fact, been, as they say, "driving standard" for the past seven years.  But as anyone else who "has a stick" knows, there's a bit more involved in driving a manual transmission car than just putting it in drive and hoping for the best (honestly, I had to drive a loaner car recently that was an automatic, and it felt like it had a mind of its own.  It was decidedly disconcerting).  With a manual you have to be, as they say, "one with the car."  You have to feel what it feels.  You have to remember to put the clutch in when you stop or risk stalling out and looking like an idiot in front of everyone else at the intersection.  You have to remember at what point the clutch is no longer engaged, or risk looking like a bigger idiot as your car stalls out starting from first gear.  You have to remember to put the car in first gear in the first place.

Of course I knew how to do all this with my old car.  Driving that, for me, was as easy and automatic as falling up the stairs.  But the new car.  For people who drive standard, who really enjoy it, the car becomes practically an extension of oneself (for those who don't enjoy it, you rather find yourself making a mental note never to be in a car with them again, ever).  The old car was broken in, it was easy going, it didn't complain much.  The new car, oh the new car.  All it takes is one wrong move.  Don't get me wrong, I love how it growls and purrs (diesel), how it kicks in with a bit of unexpected acceleration (turbo), but it's been difficult, learning to play by a new set of rules.  Going from a 5-speed 4-cylinder gas engine to a 6-speed 4-cylinder diesel is like going from a mountain bike to a road bike.  It does not like being in the wrong gear, and it even tells you when you're doing it wrong!  Ah, how technology has advanced in the past 13 years.

Adapting to change, as a grownup person, having been in the habit of doing a thing a certain way, for a very long time, is difficult.  It's demoralizing.  Every jerk and shudder, every less than smooth transition from gear to gear, leaves you feeling like an idiot.  And then the kinder chimes in from the back seat and asks why you keep doing that.

Kids have a way of pointing an incredibly strong magnifying lens at everything we, as adults, take for granted.  Adults are capable, dependable, good at things.  Until they have to do something in front of a child.  Children, in their innocent, blank-slate outlook on things, can make even the most confident adult person question everything they know about a situation.  So what if you're a world-class mechanical engineer, it's been five minutes since I unwrapped my new bike for Christmas, why haven't you put it together yet?  Are the little screws too tiny for your old, experienced eyes to see?  What's a war?  Why do people fight in wars?  You tell me all the time to be nice to people, why do they get to fight in a war?

Having been step-keeper of a 6-year-old for almost a year now, I often find myself trying to imagine what kind of person could ever think they were ready to be a parent.  What person could ever have their life so in order that they feel confident performing in front of a new human for 18 or so years?  We tell these little life forms all about how they must be polite, and not do destructive things to the furniture, and talk about their feelings instead of screaming and throwing things across the room, and various other things we, as adults, imagine that we never ever do anymore.

We picture growing up as an act of increasing self-awareness, the ability to measure our actions against a growing yardstick of social approval, and that we, as the grownups, have achieved such great heights of maturity.  Some of us, I suppose, truly have.  Most of us, I suspect, have got close enough that we can occasionally reach the summit with enough effort and a good enough leap.  And usually that's good enough to be getting on with.

Until we're put in front of a child.  Until we have to turn a psychopath into a human being.  Until we have to watch that little human-in-training go out into the world and perform in front of other adults, judgey adults with the kind of selective outlook on their own adultness that we used to have before we became guardian to this little person's moral and emotional growth.  Now every time we tell a child to do or not to do something, that magnifying lens immediately points straight at us, judging us for all the things for which we judge our children.  Use please and thank-you?  How many times a day do we omit please or thank-you?  Talk about our feelings instead of turning into passive-agressive monsters?  Do we always pick up our things and put them in the right place, or just when it's convenient?  Name-calling and other uncharitable speech?

What kind of humans did we think we were, that we could successfully perform humanness in front of a new one?  How do we expect to guide the next generation of humans if we ourselves don't even have things figured out?  And, being a positive example and all that aside, how do we expect to get on with our lives, get things figured out, if we've got these little monsters running rampant around our ankles, getting into all kinds of trouble?  That's the worst realization I've come to.  Benevolence, when raising kids, doesn't really enter into it.  The best reason to fix your life and act like a decent human being is the simple fact that the more you practice your own shrill orders to wash hands, pick up stuff, use manners, not destroy things, the fewer questions you have to answer about why kids have to do all those things but adults don't, the more likely kids will be to just do the things you want them to.

So you can get back to the business of being an immature adult person.

If You Can Read This Title, Then Read It To Someone Who Can't

April is commemorative for many reasons.  For me, it was Month of the New Car.  The last Month of the New Car was seven years ago.  I think it goes by the lunar calendar.  Or maybe the Julian.  I can never keep track.

The funny thing I learned about buying a new car is that it's much easier to do when you have no money.  The last time (and the time before that, for that matter) I had a finite amount of money, and little prospects of having more money anytime soon.  You take the best you can get for what you have.  I got lucky.  I made a good choice.  I did my research.  And the six-year-old car I bought lasted another seven years, including the year it sat in a barn while I was off having adventures.

This time round was a bit different.  I'm not the only one making use of this car (funny, the things spouses can be useful for), and so I'm not the only one paying for it now.  Meaning there was more money to be spent, potentially, on a car.  I'm not going to say how much more—because, jealousy, and all that—but suffice to say I felt rocketed quite literally into a new world, a new era, in car performance.  Let's be honest, a car with power windows and air conditioning was going to be luxury to me, so I spent most of my time looking for a new car wildly vacillating between ecstasy in choice and the sure knowledge that I was going to buy the worst car for the most money and bankrupt our household for life.  Which touchscreen is better?  Do I want the Bluetooth system that reads text messages to me, or just the one that plays music and lets me talk on the phone?  All digital, or stick with the vintage radial meters?  Color, sunroof, wheels, interior upholstery, manual, automatic, hybrid, diesel, so tiny it doesn't make a difference?  Do we buy the cheap car and pay it off quick (because you know you're going to need a new cheap car pretty soon), or the expensive one and pay it off slow and drive it until the petroleum reserves run out?

And then there's the buying experience.  Being the only driver on the homestead, I did the majority of the test-driving, talking to salespeople, reading the literature.  This wasn't the slick 50s, to be sure, but the gentleman-salespeople who thought they could turn my head with bright LED readouts and vanity mirrors surely didn't have any business selling to me.  Or those who don't believe in knowing actual facts about the vehicles they're selling.

But anyway, that's not the interesting part of the story.

Suffice to say, we bought a car from people who sold cars, for a specified amount of money.

This blog is about me.

For those of you who know, I'm the only driver.  For those of you who don't, ask someone who does.  I don't have time to unpack that right now.

It's a pretty good axiom that the primary driver of a car should be the one for whom the car is bought.  If I didn't like it, it would probably be a bad investment.  But being as the car was bought to transport the family, it's as much ours as it is mine, bought with money from both of us.  But how to do you really get a non-driver excited about something he's never really going to use?  Someone always required to ask others for a ride is going to be much more invested in his own feet than the ins and outs of any car.  Vanity, I guess, to want someone to affirm my choice in an expensive, potentially explosive, purchase.  Or just a different, rarely accounted for, point of view.

Let's take a step back.  The car we had, when we met, was mine.  Found, bought, paid for, driven, maintained, by me.  He enjoyed it for what it was.  But to everyone, not just us, not just the offspring, it was definitely my car.  Let's be honest, when I had to sell the thing it felt like an extension of me.  (But we won't get into that).  Now, depending on point of view, ownership of the car is fluid.  To those for whom money is the be-all, I suppose it goes to the one whose arbitrary market value is higher.  To the offspring, it yet remains my car.  To me, it's our car.  To him, I'd like to say it's also our car.  (I think getting his own key fob [with the cool flip out key] helped in that area).

For some, automobile matters fall squarely in the range of menfolk, irrespective of, well anything else.  I've a feeling this last is true all countries over.  Maybe there's a matrilineal village somewhere in Scandinavia where all the women have grease-stained hands and wear overalls.  I can't be sure.  Some people just want a reason to be proud of, or bask in the collective vanity, of another.  Whether or not it's founded.

But anyway, I got to thinking—as I'm so poetically wont to do—about doing, and ability, and being defined by one's abilities and, yes, disabilities, and the ways in which one deviates from the perceived norm.  Being one of those modern females emancipated on a regular intravenous drip of that feminist drug which we all speak of in hushed tones, I take exception to any suggestion that my car-purchasing prowess is any less than another's.  I of course have been told in no uncertain terms, in many venues, that my ability to buy a car without the significant twisting of any undergarments is out of the norm, and while I firmly believe and state openly that that is just absolute stupidity, I acknowledge that such statements have been made in my direction and that, according to that dubious lore, I can't expect people to make an honest accounting of my abilities based on my accomplishments all the time.

No, I won't go so far as to say being perceived female is a disability.  I of all people know the inanity of that.  But it is known that strangers, and yes, friends, will change their behavior towards you when once they perceive a difference from the accepted norm.  I continuously consulted with my male counterpart about the car we were to buy because—ideas of consulting long-term bonded compatriots over major and/or life-altering decisions aside—though he does not drive, he has fairly lucid thoughts most of the time and is generally one of the few people whose judgment I trust on a regular basis.  In short, I desired his input as an intelligent being.

Some people, upon learning of the disability of another, suddenly find cause to doubt their fitness as a person to go a day without wetting themselves, or walk upright, for that matter.  To be able to consistently tell the difference between a toothbrush and scissors; to comprehend basic English spoken in a reasonable tone.  If anyone else finds the comparison to a drunk all too apt, please raise your hand now.

But where drunks have not lived in this state their entire lives (one is to hope) and will soon pass out and wake up next day without the aforementioned condition, someone with, say, a vision impairment has in all likelihood lived his entire life with it, and is better equipped than all the harassed bartenders in the world to determine where the cutoff point is.  We baby drunks, as they make of themselves children.  We give them special treatment and special passes all the time, and think nothing of it, because they can't help themselves.  But the disabled—oh no, it's almost as though they deserve to be punished—nay, that their disability is their punishment—for being born a certain way, to look at the vast majority of everything we as a society take for granted every day, and be told they can't have that.

Want to get up those steps?  Well, I guess you should've been born with two functioning legs and kept them that way.  I mean, honestly, who do you have to blame but yourself?

Want to know where the hell you're going in an airport?  In a strange city?  In the checkout line at your local grocery store?  Well, why can't you read those signs that are so perfectly sized for my eyes?  It's not my fault you can't see that.

Want to get a decent job that requires more than picking up trash in a parking lot?  Well, you should've been born able to get through school in the usual 13 years like the rest of us.

Ever wonder what people mean when they point at something and say, "look at that!"?  Well too bad.  I don't have time to expend the two words necessary to let you feel as though you're part of the conversation and not just the village idiot who's been let out for the long weekend.

After all, who knows what use you might make of all this special treatment.  If you get ahead of me in life, than I'll have no one to blame buy myself for treating you like a reasonable person asking for reasonable accommodation.  It's not as though I go round getting special treatment all the time, and look where I've got!  You must have bootstraps there somewhere, then start pulling!

Well, that was my story about buying a car.  Remember, it's all about perception.

Oh yeah, April is also Month of the Tax Return.  If you find yourself with an overabundance, please consider donating to something like this:

http://www.aapd.com/

or any one of these:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_disability_rights_organizations

Abroad Once More

I did not expect to travel again so soon after returning to my point of origin. I wouldn't have, but for circumstances beyond my control. As it was, we almost didn't make it, due to weather beyond our control. It seems I am doomed to uncomfortable airplane rides for the rest of my life (more on that later).

But why, you may ask, were we venturing out, daring international travel, giving up the comforts of our domestic life? Well, it seems my international life was not done with me. I had, while I was abroad, the great misfortune of making friends. Yes even I fell victim to that ploy, so far from home, and for such a long time. I couldn't help myself! And I did it to such a thorough extent that I got myself invited to a wedding. How could I refuse? I could not so disappoint the feelings of one who so obviously adored and needed me there with her at such an important time of her life. And so I bought the plane tickets, booked the hotel room, and bought a new outfit just for the occasion.

The last time I was abroad, I did not dare try to drive, in any of the countries I stayed in, left side or right. This time, though, we really didn't have a choice if we didn't want to spend an arm and a leg getting ferried around. So we rented a car. And I have to say, it wasn't as bad as I expected. The cars weren't terribly different, though they showed a marked propensity for oversized pick-up trucks and ridiculously fast cars that would skid directly off the road at the mere sight of a snowflake. Yes, it seemed we would do alright, down in Texas.

That was, of course, once we arrived. Though the weather was practically tropical in that Texan city of Houston, getting out of Rochester, and making our connection, took some luck. Flying out of the Northeast in the middle of January is never a sure bet. And the weather in this country seems to have undergone some odd "climate change" in the year I was away. Now even the weather in such southern climes as Florida, nay even Georgia, is unpredictable enough to delay a flight.

Rain. We were delayed for rain. Hours and hours we waited. And then we finally boarded the plane and took off, and I began to wish we'd waited even more. Every bump and jump of the plane made me flash back to that day, my last time flying abroad. Returning home from my yearlong adventure, I feared the plane might simply drop out of the sky and into the Atlantic Ocean somewhere.

Obviously it didn't, then and now. And this time, at least, I got to watch the landscape go by as we came in to land. Texas is so flat, so brown. It's a wonder people want to live there at all. Well, maybe they have some odd immigration restrictions, keeping people from leaving the country. Perhaps it's the language barrier, keeping them from entering the U.S. Though their dialect is somewhat similar to ours, there are remarkable differences that make them almost impossible to understand at times.

Be that all as it may we did, finally, get to Houston—they didn't lose our luggage!—and set about getting our rental car. Having only ever rented a car in my own country before, I was unsure about the process here. And so, one false start, a ridiculous amount of waiting, a confusing shuttle ride, and a certain amount of uncomfortable standing in front of an unstaffed rental counter later, and we were knee-deep in unintelligible paperwork. How much insurance did we want to buy? Turns out that in Texas they are tired of determining who is responsible for accidents (are they all overly prone to accidents? maybe it's all those bridges they have signs all over the place about, the ones that freeze before everything else), so they just assume everyone's responsible. Thus we left in our new used rental car feeling either grossly underinsured or ridiculously overinsured, I'm not really sure which. In any case, we had a car and we were on our way.

The speed limit on most roads in that country is higher than I am used to, and everyone there seems to take it as an invitation to simply drive as fast as they can, all the time. Except when there's construction. Or any random slow-down, really, in which case we were suddenly traveling at 30mph, when just moments before we had been going 75. This made our trip down to Galveston—I still haven't worked out whether Galveston is a part of that country, or some kind of commonwealth—somewhat longer than we'd hoped, also a bit exciting from my repeated attempts at manually shifting a car with an automatic transmission. Truly I felt as though I were missing a limb, trying to drive that car.

Galveston, like all places worth making the site of a post-apocalyptic science fiction dystopia, is reached by driving across an enormous bridge. I'm not yet aware of any post-apocalyptic science fiction dystopia being set on that island yet, but there's always hope for the future. It was at some point, I'm told, the site of a great storm which caused a large amount of damage. Maybe whoever writes it can work that in somehow. At any rate, we used that storm scenario as the premise for why the city of Galveston seemed so bare, except at a couple of the larger intersections. Walking around the city, looking for things to do, places to eat, one could practically see the zombies dragging their half-rotted limbs down empty streets. Many of the houses are quite old and (no doubt) haunted. Honestly I don't know why someone hasn't written this yet.

Maybe I'll go do that now.

Stay tuned for the (eventual) conclusion of Abroad Once More...