The first time I operated a clutch and a manual transmission was during my first summer break after my freshman year at the University of Illinois. And it wasn’t in a car, but on a motorcycle. My high school best buddy was also back after his freshman year in Wisconsin. He showed up at my house with a Honda CB750, about the coolest motorcycle available at the time. He took me for a ride and invited me to give it a try—with him as a passenger.

An example of a Honda CB750. I’d ridden minibikes before, but this was the first real motorcycle.

Jimmy was and is a very trusting man.

It was herky, it was jerky, but hell if it wasn’t fun. A couple years later, a friend gave me instruction on his manual clutch Volvo station wagon, and for decades I never drove a car with anything but a stick shift.

I’ve always liked cars well enough but, for most of my life, I’ve been partial to motorcycles, and have owned one or another for decades. That run ended a couple years after we moved to downtown Chicago. Garaging a motorcycle is expensive in our neighborhood. More important, riding has always been an escape, a sort of meditation for me, but riding downtown—for me (lots of people do it)—just seems more like combat.

Riding a motorcycle requires hyper vigilance, wherever one rides. That may seem contradictory to my characterizing it as meditative earlier. To explain, my brain can spin hard sometimes, and it feels like I’m thinking of everything at once, unable to focus on one thing. I think it’s probably the survival instinct—nothing helps me focus and be in the moment like riding a motorcycle.

To help ameliorate the inherently greater risk of riding on two wheels instead of four, I committed myself to being as safe as I could be. I took the Motorcycle Safety Foundationclasses, I always wore a helmet and protective clothing, and I did track days. Riding on a racetrack might seem to be a dangerous thing to do, but it was infinitely safer than riding on public roads. Because, no cars. No cars to make a left in front of you. No cars to change lanes into you without notice. No cars to rear-end you at a stop sign.

The training made me a much better rider, and it improved my driving just as much. It taught me how dangerous bad behavior behind the wheel looks like from a vulnerable motorcyclist’s point of view. That just made me resolve to work harder at driving safely. Motorcycle training also taught me that what we call defensive driving shouldn’t mean passive driving. For example, if there’s a car doing weird weaving things in front of you, you look for an opportunity and then you gas it to get ahead and leave the wanderer behind.

Today, I don’t much like driving. That’s partly because I don’t do it as often, I’m sure. And because I use Zipcar, (essentially a short-hop rental service), I’m not always driving the same car. Jesus, how many different ways should there be to start the damn car? The user interfaces, in tech terms, are not in the least bit standardized between cars.

My observation is that over the past several years—here in the city, anyway—drivers have gotten worse than ever. That may also be a function of my driving less and being less sharp.

But I think there’s something else at work. There’s distracted driving, which has always been a factor, but cell phones substantially compound it. Between ride-sharing services and the myriad food delivery services, there are always a ton of cars on the road. And lots of these drivers are part-time, every-now-and then practitioners. They are slaves to their phone GPS, from what I can glean from some close calls, when the voice tells them they missed a turn and it’s rerouting, they panic and make a U-turn right in front of other drivers.

Modern cars also have tons of electronics and alerts, ostensibly to make things safer. I’m a complete believer in things like ABS and traction control, but I’m not at all certain about all the features–backup cameras, for example, leave me cold.

All of this thinking coalesced a few weeks back when I saw an article in the NY Times headlined: “Forget Self-Driving Cars. Bring Back the Stick Shift.”

The headline made me skeptical at first—maybe just another Luddite cranky guy like me wrote this?

The author is a psychiatrist, and his premise is that some safety technology has the unintended consequence of lulling drivers into being less mindful. And that driving a stick is one way of keeping a driver engaged.

And he makes a pretty good case for his hypothesis. From the piece:

“Backup cameras, mandatory on all new cars as of last year, are intended to prevent accidents. Between 2008 and 2011, the percentage of new cars sold with backup cameras doubled, but the backup fatality rate declined by less than a third while backup injuries dropped only 8 percent.

Perhaps one reason is, as a report from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administrationput it, “Many drivers are not aware of the limitations” of the technology. The report also found that one in five drivers were just like me — they had become so reliant on the backup aids that they had experienced a collision or near miss while driving other vehicles.”

The piece refers to fatalities inflicted by experimental self-driving cars. The interesting, if tragic point: During testing, these cars had a human who was there to intervene if something went wrong. But all that tech lulled the human car-sitters into inattention.

The piece closes with the author’s recollection of his first stick-shift car:

“When I bought that first five-speed BMW, my dad cautioned me about safety, thinking that driving a stick would be more distracting and less safe. He was wrong. Though research on the safety of manual transmissions is scant, one study on the driving performance of teenage boys with A.D.H.D. revealed that cars with manual transmissions resulted in safer, more attentive driving than automatics. This suggests that the cure for our attentional voids might be less technology, not more.”

Hear, hear!

The day before Whit and I were in Highland Park, kids got to test out wheelchairs in the gym.

I’ve written about Patty O’Machel here before. A writer, special needs advocate and the mother of a teenager who has cerebral palsy, Patty has started her own business to encourage other schools to use the disability awareness curriculum she developed years ago for her daughter’s elementary school. Educating Outside the Lines launched last year, and already many Chicago suburban school districts have added the program to their curriculum. Prosthetic legs, wheelchairs and white canes can be scary to kids, so Patty developed her Educating Outside the Lines program to allow children to experience these “helping tools” hands-on and meet some people who use them. Example: before Whitney and I arrived in Highland Park for our school visits Tuesday, the third graders had used a Braille typewriter to write in Braille. Patty’s program serves to demystify differences, erase isolation, combat bullying.

It’s a great program for the kids who participate, and it’s been great for me, too — Patty has asked my Seeing Eye dog Whitney and me to visit schools we’ve never been to before! And that, in turn, is good news for you Safe & Sound blog readers who enjoy hearing questions kids ask during my school presentations. Here’s a sampling from the third-graders Whitney and I met at Braeside and Ravinia elementary schools in Highland Park, Illinois this past Tuesday:

• How do you get into a car?
• Do you remember what things looked like when you were a little kid and could still see?
• Do you have lots of friends who are blind?
• How do you swim if you can’t see where you’re going?
• Can you play sports if you’re blind?
• Did you ever drown?
• So after you get in the car, how do you drive, I mean, like, there are all those buttons so how can you tell those buttons and how can you know which one to push?
• How old are you?
• How do you get on the plane if pets aren’t allowed on planes?
• So if a friend comes to pick you up, how do you know if they’re there and it’s the right car?

Right then a boy named Alistair raised his hand. “I have an idea for you, Beth!” he exclaimed. “How about if you teach your dog to bark just once if its a friend? And then two barks would mean it’s a taxi, and three barks…”. What a sweet little guy. I hated to cut him off, but hey, we had to get going — there was still another school to visit. “Alistair! You’re a genius!” I gushed, making a point to thank him before breaking the bad news. “One problem, though,” I said with a sigh. “Seeing Eye dogs aren’t allowed to bark.”

Whitney and I are visiting two more elementary schools in Highland Park this Wednesday, so look for more questions in an upcoming post. In the meantime, you can check out this short video to see the positive impact Educating Outside the Lines has on the kids who participate, and Link to the Educating Outside the Lines web site for more information on ways to bring ability programs to schools.

My first recollections of the TV quiz show Jeopardy! date back to watching TV with my mom, who was an avid watcher when she could catch it—there was no Tivo then. I faintly remember that perhaps it came on late in the afternoon? Well, Esther was pretty damn good at it (she worked crosswords during commercial breaks) and I remember being pretty damn frustrated that I couldn’t hold a candle. Until I could—barely—and that was something of a rite of passage.

Jeopardy! and I drifted apart for many years, until the days when Beth and I and Gus were lucky in the late 90s to live on the Outer Banks of North Carolina and had the time to turn it on pretty regularly. I got pretty big britches competing against myself in the living room, and went so far as signing up for a test and audition to be held the nearest site—Washington, D.C. held that distinction.

That’s the Jeopardy Terminator.

I put on a sport jacket and tried to adopt my smartest looking facial expression—and soon gave up on that. I made the four-hour drive to a hotel I can’t remember in the least. More than 100 of us would-be contestants were herded into a banquet hall to be briefed on the process.

First, we took a test en masse—all of us got a written test. Then, we all waited while Jeopardy! staff graded our exams. Afterward, one by one, the names of people who had passed were called, and each was led to another room. I was one of them.

The audition room was just another hotel meeting room with makeshift contestant stands. We were given clickers, and a staff member read the clues out loud, just as Alex Trebek would if we made it to the show. I did get in a couple answers, but heck if I remember what they were. We also went through a mock get-to-know-you interview of the kind Trebek does.

In the end I made the cut. Which only meant that I’d go into a pool of others from around the country who’d also made the cut. After that, it was pretty much a lottery. I was active for about 18 months, but I never got the call.

Again, Alex and I drifted apart until recently. Because I’ve been working from home more, I sometimes get to turn it on (I still don’t Tivo). And, I got the bug, so last year I signed up to be notified for the next online test.

I’ve felt that the quality of contestants and difficulty of the questions has gone up since I qualified decades ago. Beth says, as diplomatically as she can (which is not very), that it might have more to do with my decline. OK, it’s probably a little of both, but I’m pretty sure that making an online test available results in a whole lot more people passing that first hurdle—or, if they grade on a curve, that means the overall quality of the pool probably increases. (So just shut it, Beth.)

Well, last week, I took the online test. Fifty questions, 15 seconds to answer each—it flies by. So much so that, you really couldn’t cheat with internet searches. By the time you read and comprehended the question, there just isn’t time. (It would not preclude, however, having someone look over your shoulder and help.)

I have no idea how I did—except there were two easy ones that I somehow had a brain cramp on, thinking of the answer too late. Of course, those are the only two I remember.

Anyone who passes will be invited to the next rehearsal/interview in their preferred city.

As many of you probably know, Jeopardy! has been in the news lately: the current contestant has been tearing up the records—he’s already over $400,000 in just over a week. And he’s not just winning—he’s burying people. (Did I mention he and I both went to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign?)

I’ve gotten to watch him a few times—it’s at once spectacular and sort of sad. Spectacular because the guy is a phenom. A freak. And sad because he’s mowing through people who went through all that trouble to get on the show just to get completely destroyed. Smart, nice people who earn decent scores and don’t have a chance.

Meantime, I don’t know whether I passed the new online or not. I figure if I don’t hear soon, that it’s like not hearing from an employer after submitting a resume. Still, I think it would be a blast to get on the show.

But not until that Jeopardy! destroyer is long gone.

Has it only been a week since last Monday? Well, yes, of course. But it feels like a lot’s happened.

The mayor-elect throws out the ceremonial first pitch.

For one, here in Chicago we’re going to have a new mayor. Lori Lightfoot, who was a long shot of a long shot when she announced her candidacy—won the election hands down. It was a landslide, and to me, a referendum on business as usual. I supported Lightfoot not because I’m certain she’s going to make everything right, but because for the first time, I had the chance to vote for someone completely unconnected to any of the usual Cook County/Chicago suspects. I felt I had to take that chance, and apparently, a lot of my fellow Chicagoans felt the same way.

Because Beth knows people (thanks Regan Burke and Evan Hatfield) we found ourselves at Lightfoot’s election night event at the Hilton, just a couple blocks away from our place.

It was a hoot. And a great crowd of what would’ve been, a few decades ago, a bunch of strange bedfellows. Chicago socialites, LGBT activists, black, white, and the best of all—a bunch of plumbers’ union members. Trust me, back in the day, that didn’t happen. The crowd mix was a reminder that for all the tumult, all that is wrong that needs to be set right, some things—by my lights—have gotten a lot better in my lifetime.

In all it was a happy, triumphant scene that bred optimism. It’s the best I’ve felt about things in Chicago in memory. Now, the work starts.

It’s kind of like opening day, when hope springs eternal, and the cold hard facts haven’t piled up to indicate otherwise. Speaking of which, thanks to the weather, our friends Don and Juli ended up with tickets to the White Sox home opener—the friends with whom they share season tickets couldn’t attend the rescheduled game.

Mike and Beth win, thanks to Don and Julie’s generosity.

And guess what?

The weather was great.

Lori Lightfoot threw out the first pitch, and did a fine job.

The White Sox won.

I’m sticking with the hope thing.

Know how actors prepare to do fight scenes on stage? I do!

Mike joined me for Goodman Theatre’s presentation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Sweat yesterday — my Seeing Eye dog Whitney led me to the theater early to participate in the audio touch tour before the show.

Still time to see “Sweat” at Goodman Theatre.

Other touch tours I’ve been to in Chicago have introduced me to actors, directors, set designers, stage managers and costume designers, but this is the first touch tour I’ve been to where a stage combat director took the time to show us how a fight scene would play out on stage.

Fight choreographer Matt Hawkins came on stage after we’d been introduced to the Sweat actors. Matt explained how fight choreographers (sometimes called stage combat instructors) minimize the possibility of an actor hurting themselves or their fellow actors while doing stage combat. “It’s my job to make sure the actors understand they never have to make a move in a fight scene that makes them feel unsafe, we actually want them to speak up if they feel unsure or unsafe about a move.”

And with that, he turned around to the actors and asked if they’d feel comfortable going through the play’s fight scene and describing their actions out loud as they performed them for us. “We’ll do it very slowly,” he said. “You’ll take your places, and when I say go you’ll say your character’s name, describe the action you’re doing as you perform it, and react just as you will during the performance,” he said. “You all comfortable with this?” Sounded to me like they all said yes, but just to make sure, Matt called the name of each actor one by one to ask if they were comfortable. Each said yes, and then Matt said “Go!”

”Jason pushing Oscar in the chest!” the actor playing Jason says, and we hear Oscar let out a painful “Oomph!” We hear Chris on the side yelling for them to stop, and then Jason pipes up. “Jason picks up baseball bat!” Then the actor playing Stan says, “Stan  grabs hold of Jason’s arm to pull him back!” Jason says,” Jason shoves Stan’s arm backward,” and Stan says, “Stan falls to his knees!” we hear a thump. Jason actor says “Jason picks up baseball bat, pulls it backward and swings it at Oscar’s stomach!” we hear Oscar moan. “Oscar falls on Stan,” the actor playing Oscar says, and then we hear another actor moaning. Must be Stan…

It continued from there. Before this sample scene started, Matt told us TV and film have convinced viewers that there’s a certain sound that accompanies each blow, but in real life, punches do not make much sound. Spoiler alert here: A woman on stage who is not in the midst of the brawl supplies the sound effect. “Audiences expect a sound,” Matt said with a shrug. “So Jessie times each blow and claps with every punch.”

My description here cannot do this all justice. I fear I may leave readers thinking Steam is a violent play. It is not. The entire fight scene probably took 8 seconds, and it’s the only physical violence in the entire play.

But it is an extremely important scene.

I’ve been to plays with fight scenes before, but at those, all I could do when the fight started was close my eyes, sit back, and wait until the scene was over. I’d have to wait until after the play to ask the sighted friend with me to explain what wwent down.

The touch tour yesterday showed me, an audience member who can’t see, how the scene was choreographed. It also explained how much actors in a fight scene on stage have to do to stay safe. It was fascinating.

Seems to me that playwrights who write fight scenes into their plays must do so for a reason. Maybe a fight scene helps tell the story when words are not enough? Thanks to the audio touch tour sneak preview I got for Sweat yesterday, I was able to take in the message of the entire play. Thank you, touch tour. Thank you, brave actors. Thank you, fighting instructor. Thank you, Goodman Theater Accessibility Services.

Sweat has been extended to April 21, 2019, and Chicago Tribune theater critic Chris Jones says the Chicago performance was better than the one he saw on Broadway years ago. Get more information and buy tickets here.