Love in 8th Gear

I knew a guy who owned a moving van. One of those 16 wheel monsters, this was back in the 70's when trucks were trucks and unlike the automatic transmission trucks of today, it had so many gears that a driver spent most of his time shifting through them if he was driving in town. I asked this man if I could try it and he said sure. My first mistake came within thirty seconds of sliding behind the wheel. After turning on the ignition, I put the truck in first gear. Sitting in the passenger’s seat, he frowned and asked what the hell was I doing? I shrugged because wasn’t it obvious? He scolded, “You never start out in first gear in a truck like this! First gear is so powerful and slow that you only use it to go up very steep hills when you’re fully loaded, or trying to get the truck out of a snowbank. Put it in 8th gear and let’s go.” Today I was watching an obviously brand new couple tiptoeing tentatively around each other both verbally and physically. I thought: some relationships should start in eighth gear instead of first. Those first gears of a relationship— courting and kissing and petting… can be exciting and romantic, but not always and inevitably there’s a lot of awkwardness and misunderstanding in their air too. The fact of the matter is, some couples would be far better off starting out way down in the gears; as if the people had known each other for a long time. They’ve gotten those first formal introductory chats out of the way, the first awkward fumbling toward sex, the first sex, etcetera. And now their relationship has the potential of becoming genuinely interesting, expanding and resonant. Those fidgety, fumbling, fraught prelims are behind them, like the first gears in that 16 wheeler. The truck is up to speed now and can move fast down the open road. On the other hand, there are those relationships which are always in the wrong gear…