Personal Narrative: Riding In Cars By Myself

Riding in Cars by Myself
-This is dedicated to my 11th grade English teacher, who gave me a 50/50 on my English essay so I would have a chance at a B for a final grade.
The fluorescent lights were flickering as Michael was finally sitting down after an 8 hour late night shift at the local Waffle House on a cool and foggy Sunday morning. He wiped the sweat from his brow realizing how much he reeked of cigarette smoke and waffle batter and realized he didn’t even have the energy to be glad he was finally going home. He called his mother for a ride for one of the last times. The attitude he gave off over the phone wasn’t because he didn’t appreciate his mother waking up early in the morning to come pick him up, nor was it because he had been
Well, Michael thought it was time to change that. He had been pestering his friend, Norman, to put in a good word for him at the Rolla Waffle House. By some miracle of God he landed the job after submitting countless applications to business all around Rolla. The job wasn’t exactly what someone would call fun and Michael felt it would be quite a stretch to say it was even tolerable, but he pushed past it, knowing that it would ultimately lead to his independence in the form of a car. He didn’t have a particular car in mind, although it couldn’t be your typical beater Honda or Buick. He wanted something a little more high-profile. An older man named Stuart, who Michael only knew through his family, had agreed to take on the task of trying to find something that would suit his needs. Stuart knew his cars and worked part-time fixing up cars and reselling them. Michael knew of his background and was confident he wouldn’t
This was because this was the day that was going to change his life, the day he was going to be free to come and go as he pleased. Stuart came by his house just before noon. It was a typical blazing hot Missouri summer day, which suited the eagerness and excitement felt by Michael quite nicely. They drove 15 miles or so outside of town only to arrive at a nice looking house in the middle of nowhere. Their she was, sitting in the driveway. It was slightly beat up but for the most part in pretty good condition. They went up to the house and got the keys so we could start it and take it for a bit of a test drive. What really caught me off guard was the lack of the traditional PRNDL (Park, Reverse, Neutral, Drive, and Low) shifter for an automatic transmission and a slightly rusty chromed stick that was in its place, sporting the numbers 1-5 in different corners of the stick. “Oh god” Michael thought to himself, “I’ve never driven a stick before!” Now, Michael knew the basic mechanics of working the clutch and shifting through gears in order to correlate to the speed you were traveling, but he had never had the chance to actually put that theory into practice. Michael told Stuart this and a rough version of his response was something like, “Well, I guess you’re going to have to learn.” If there ever was a place that Michael was going to learn, it was here and now. They both hopped in,