Confessions of a Public Speaker

Chapter 9. The clutch is your friend

After years of studying learning theory, the science of how we learn, I can tell you this: most of what you need to know is easily learned from what happened to me in 1989 when I almost killed three people.

The long list of very stupid things not to do in life includes this: making a left turn into three lanes of oncoming traffic, during a driver’s test at age 17, in NYC, in your grandmother’s old car, during rush hour, while suddenly realizing you never practiced making a left turn into traffic. And in 1989 I did it with predictably disastrous results. Less than a minute into my driver’s exam, when asked to make a left turn, I waited behind the car in front of me and then executed a clever move: mimicked the exact action of that car. But the Ford Mustang I followed flew through the intersection several seconds faster than my grandmother’s old Honda Civic could manage. Whereas he beat the oncoming traffic and roared on down the road, I ended up directly in the path of a speeding 18-wheel Mack truck.

I remember the look of surprise on the truck driver’s face as he slammed on his brakes. He wasn’t angry—he didn’t have time to be. Instead, he had the focus of adrenalized self-preservation, using every inch of the pedal to discover exactly how effective those brakes were. In the same instant, there was a scream from Mr. Dinko, the scrawny test examiner ...