Neutral? What Neutral?

Nothing’s more fun than shutting down the entire car wash because you forgot how to put your newish car in neutral.

I aligned the front wheel of the car into the rails as the attendant waved me forward, expecting my car to glide along effortlessly. He gave me the thumbs up for neutral. I froze. I put the car in park instead. Then drive. Wait. Back in park. WTF? My brain glitched. Where the hell was neutral?!

I felt as if someone yanked the power cord from my frontal lobe.

Panicked, I rolled down the window and yelped as the gears clanked and my car, wheels locked, jerked and bounced. The attendant immediately shut everything down – the pulleys, the foam, big blue brushes, sprayers, all of it. He calmly walked toward me while I shouted that I didn’t know how to put my car in neutral. He nodded and simply told me to pull the shifter toward me.

As Homer Simpson might say:

When Panic Meets Foam

My Buick Envision has something called an Electronic Precision Shift (EPS) system, which is a stalk on the right side of the steering column. Buick’s website describes it as “ergonomically placed for intuitive use.”

I beg to differ. There is nothing intuitive about this, especially since this is where the windshield wiper stalk used to be in my last Buick. My brain hasn’t updated its software to 2025 yet, so of course I push the wrong thing half the time.

Why is this so effing hard? Why is everything a puzzle?

Oh, I get it now, thank you

After the attendant saved me and the car wash started up again, I studied the stalk. Finally, I noticed the itty-bitty arrow pointing toward me (sort of) for Neutral. I remember frantically looking at it, but the N and direction of that arrow did not register. My brain missed it.

Here’s the logic: up for Reverse, down for Drive, in for Park and toward you for Neutral. As you can see. It’s all there.

But this is not “Electronic Precision Shift.” It’s “How to Humiliate Yourself in Public.” When I got home from the car wash, I needed to decompress with a cuddle break with my dog.

I hate this shifter. The placement feels awkward. On the highway I once accidentally bumped it into neutral trying to use the wipers. There is nothing quite like suddenly revving with no power to the wheels on I-75 to spike your adrenaline.

Ask me how to navigate a website, troubleshoot your iPhone, or use a new app, and I’d do fine. But put me in a car wash with Buick’s EPS shifter and I will melt down.

What’s the most recent blunder you made that you feel like a numb nut? Please, I need to know! lol.

Thank you for visiting! Author Linda K. Sienkiewicz is a wrangler of words and big messy feelings in fiction and poetry. Her second novel, Love and Other Incurable Ailments, is coming October 27, 2026, from Regal House Publishing: When love letters from a despondent stranger land in her lap, an anxious overthinker becomes convinced she’s the cure, and sets off to save him, and herself, blissfully armed with nothing but magical thinking.
Connect with Linda on social media via LinkTree. Check out Linda’s Books.

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