Sticking With It

I will apologize in advance everyone for not having a good picture to accompany my post. You will see why in a moment! I decided to have my friend Christ teach me how to drive a manual car. The so called "stick shift" approach to driving, as I have heard from some, is supposed to be much more exciting than the automatic approach. I did NOT find that to be the case.

This skill requires a lot of coordination and good timing. I quickly learned that I take for granted what my automatic car, named Scarlet, does for me. So, as you begin driving, you have to press down the clutch and the brake pedal in order to start the car. I became good at this very quickly because of all the times I had to start the car up again. As you begin to accelerate, you must slowly release the clutch pedal. If you don't do it with quite the right touch, the car will stall and the embarrassment sets in. Overall, I stalled a grand total of 5 times in about 25 minutes.

Have you heard the saying "go big or go home"? I really tried hard to implement that into this assignment. Don't worry, I wasn't speeding around campus or throwing water balloons at couples passing by. I simply decided to get the police involved! The first time I stalled I saw some red an blue flashing lights pull up beside us. How much more embarrassed could I be! We were in a parking lot for heaven's sake. Apparently, my buddy's car had expired plates. I was very, very tempted to ask fora picture with the officer, but he seemed to be having one of those nights, so I controlled myself. In terms of stepping outside my comfort zone, I think stalling right in front of an officer who was pulling me over has to count for something.

Folk knowledge is a lot more dangerous than I thought! I didn't know that the police would show up when I tried to deepen my appreciation for folk knowledge. Although we grow up and naturally learn some types of folk knowledge, many of them must be practiced, and practiced, and practiced some more. The best way to claim knowledge as your own seems to be to practice it and then to teach it.