Learning To Drive Stick: Banded Snatches: Going Heavy With Kundera

Does feeling good make me better?

After five minutes of screaming, my stepdad gave up.

“I’m driving,” he said, forcing me into the passenger seat on some empty country road surrounded by cornstalks.

The sun hung high overhead, a few marshmallow clouds passed lazily, and my first and only lesson on how to drive a stick ended abruptly.

I thought I was a failure, too stupid to understand, unteachable.

A week later, a friend told me it wasn’t about timing but “balance.”

I took that word with me, stole the keys to my first car, and mastered the manual transmission in a moment.

It’s a lesson with layers I still remember.

Superficially, it shows that not everyone can teach. Some do far more harm than good.

Deeper, it reads like a motivational speech about persistence. A keep shifting, keep trying, keep driving until it clicks sort of story.