Previous Challenge Entry (Level 3 - Advanced)
Topic: Control (01/30/06)
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TITLE: where is the gear stick | Previous Challenge Entry
By geraldine witcher
02/03/06 -
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It was the first day I drove my new car. It had to be an automatic gear change as I had damaged my shoulder and changing gear was not easy to do. The new car was lovely but I did miss my old one. The seat had moulded itself to my shape and welcomed me in when I sat in it. The controls were so well known I didn’t even have to think to turn the lights on or indicate before turning. I even knew where the little spider hid inside the wing mirror over the autumn, emerging every night to weave a little web between the mirror frame and the window in the door. Every morning for two or three months it was there, and every morning when I opened the door the spider scuttled back behind the mirror as his web was destroyed. But in the winter he disappeared, which was good because it meant he had found another home somewhere in my garden rather than being sold with the old car.
Now I sat in the new car. The seat felt strange, the steering wheel wasn’t quite the same size, the controls were all on the other side of the steering column and even the radio wasn’t playing what I expected it to. The drive to Birmingham, which I’d done every Monday for eighteen months, no longer seemed like a familiar route, but strange and unknown. I felt out of control.
Setting off with trepidation, and a foot hovering over the brake, I got to the end of the driveway. Intending to indicate right, I found myself switching the windscreen wipers on. The headlights were brighter than the ones on my old car, lighting up the predawn street with its parked cars and silent houses. Carefully along the winding country roads I drove, getting used to the fact that I didn’t have to change gear, and listening as the car did it for me. The darkness was brightening over to my right as the sun rose on a lovely spring morning. The lights dimmed themselves as the sunlight grew. I’d forgotten it would do that. Once on the motorway the thrill of a new car began to overcome the fear. How smoothly and quietly it accelerated, how gentle the engine noise, even at speed. I had found the indicator switch now and used it correctly as I changed lane. I was beginning to feel in control again.
When I arrived at college my friends were surprised, as I hadn’t told them I was getting a new car. After the lectures we walked out into warm sunshine, fragrant with that special early spring scent. I got into my car and a little thrill of excitement ran through me as I touched the one control my old car hadn’t had. With a gentle swishing noise the roof slid back from over me and folded itself away into the trunk. Blue sky arched over me and the spring air rushed in. Fastening my belt I edged out into the traffic. I was going to enjoy this car. I knew too that I could be just as good and safe a driver in this new car as I was it the old one. So with the wind in my hair and Mozart on the radio as I drove through the warm afternoon sunshine, I felt happily in control, just as I had in my old car.
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