Devonne Brown

The gear shift was gone, the radio knob was nowhere to be found, and how the hell do I unlock the freaking thing? I needed four wheel drive, the radio was driving me nuts, and I had to get into the thing to go anywhere. I couldn’t take my eyes off the road. My hands reached for things that were no longer in the right place. 

For five years, I had worked knobs, buttons, and gear shifts to the point I didn’t even have to look. Who moved everything to weird places? Why did everything require strange movements? Why didn’t cars have to be standardized? It was downright dangerous to be in an unfamiliar car. 

I could drive the old car with my eyes closed. I could put the vehicle in four-wheel drive without looking. My hands knew where everything was. I could even reach into the back seat for a Diet Coke without swerving to the left or swerving to the right. In this car, I was capable of  causing a ten car pile up on a dirt road or at least running over the hill into the creek. The best I could hope for was getting high centered in the middle of my aunt’s rutted quartermile driveway. I got the big SUV for traveling to her house in the first place. 

My arms and hands were so used to the rhythm and rhymes of the little black Blazer that they always went right for that configuration first. Only when the results were ineffective did I realize where I’d gone wrong, lucky for me, I’d never been in a high traffic situation when it happened, except for that one time when I just about stood the damned thing on its head on the interstate behind a five car pile up. I was lucky I was not number six in the accident.

Even the brakes were different. My legs applied the same pressure to the brake pedals of the newbie as I’d used on the old vehicular unit. It didn’t slow as fast. I had to slam it so hard it nearly stood at attention. At least it stopped.

Muscle memory, in piano and guitar, is a wonderful thing. It stores the chords in your fingers forever. In cars, however, you have to unlearn old muscle memories fast, form new ones and learn to drive all over again. Unlearn or die.