Back in the 80’s, there was a book “Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche”. It suggested that real men drove automatics because real men were comfortable enough in their masculinity to have their gears changed for them.
Well, there have already been a few replies but this is my take.
It’s like driving a bumper car:
Right pedal = GO.
Left pedal = STOP.
Not too tricky.
You got the wrong terminology. The clutch is part of the engine that disengages the engine from the gearbox. It’s operated by the ‘clutch pedal’, which is what I though it meant. The stick is the stick. Or gearstick.
Heh. I guess it’s lucky for me that I don’t have to be secure in my masculinity. 
Indeed. Which reminds me of another thing that confuses my automatic-driving friends: they are always amazed at how close I sit to the steering wheel. When I explain it’s because I’m 5’3 and need to be able to fully depress the clutch pedal, I often get blank looks in return…or that kind of “oooohhhh” response that means they don’t really understand what you’ve just explained, but they’re pretending to.
We want your first impressions when you get the car 
Hill starts are very easy on an automatic. The transmission will not let the car roll backwards. Of course, there will be some rolling if the hill is too steep, but very slowly.
Oh, and there’s no way the engine can stall, unless there is some mechanical/electrical problem.
What do you mean lower gears? Some automatics have an L position (like the Fiat Punto I once drove) I thought it was something like a reduction gear, but I drove it in L for a while and didn’t notice any difference.
My volvo (automatic) has L and 3 settings. L is for steep hills or icy conditions, 3 is exclusively for when you’re spinning your tires or L isn’t enough.
YMMV, of course.
automatics have gears below ‘D’ that effectively turn the car into a 3 speed, 2 speed or 1 speed car.
Learning to drive, I was casually told, “you use them for steep hill”.
What I wasn’t told was, “If you’re driving down a mountain for 5 minutes, and you smell something burning, and you get to the bottom and your brakes don’t work and you drive right through a stop sign onto a major road into oncoming traffic, then you should have used them.”
My old Volvo was a 5 speed that had a little button you pushed to turn it into a 4-speed for highway passing.
Anyway, I’ve known how to drive stick for a while, but the car I got this summer is the first time I’ve ever owned a stick. I love it. I just love being able to have a gear when you want it.
I don’t mind city driving at all. That’s just driving and shifting.
What I hate is interstate stop-and-go. Everytime I up-shift, all the traffic comes to a stop, so it’s either lug the engine or downshift. Everytime I keep it in the present gear, traffic starts flying so I’m racing the engine. . .so I upshift. . .and traffic starts breaking. . .and so on.
And after D comes L (or a number, or L1, L2…)
These *really * mean:
P = Put the key in
R = Race
N = Nothing
D = Drag
L = Leap
So when you’re driving alongside someone at 50 mph and you can tell they want to race, shift that bad boy into the "R"acing gear. Go ahead, give it a try! Within days your transmission will run like brand new.
Here’s a pic of my car’s selector: http://www.hyundai.co.uk/showroom/images/interior/santafe_3.jpg
When the selector in in D, you can push it sideways to sequential mode. Then, if you push it forward it shifts up and if you pull it, it downshifts. Simple and effective
…or unless I’m driving it…
Well, you did ask, so here goes…
I don’t like automatics. I had to drive the thing through London to get it home, so I can appreciate the benefits of not having a dead left foot. But I don’t live in London. I miss the feeling of dropping down to third around bends in country lanes and being able to pull away from them just as I engage the clutch. I even gasp like the coasting feeling of dropping the clutch in traffic queues.
Bahhh. Maybe I’m being harsh. I’ll give it time.
(And yes, the car is an underpowered PoS, as I already told you. It makes the bumper-car analogy all to appropriate. But it was free…)
Driving stick is a plus. Because not many other people can do it, you’ll have a far less chance of it getting stolen.
And if you live in London, you wouldn’t need cars that much. My relatives had a flat rented there. It was nice. I could go out and see movies, get dinner from where-ever, and do a bunch of other crap. That’s one of the places I would live in.
There are people who don’t know how to drive automatics? 
That makes absolutely no sense to me. Put the car in drive, press the gas pedal. How hard is that? Its the car of choice for one-legged folks!
Around here, manuals are a bit of a novelty. I’m somewhat ashamed to admit I’ve never learned, but one reason is because 95% of the cars here are automatics. I’ll learn sooner or later, and probably stuggle a bit at first (who doesn’t?) but with the way traffic works around here I couldn’t fathom people bothering with a manual when much of the driving is so stop-and-go.
Plus having an automatic frees up my right hand to drink coffee. Also, when traffic is moving at 3MPH, I don’t even have to push anything, truly an automatic transmission of sorts. If I want extra oomph, I can always drop it in a lower gear. I use the E-brake a lot too for quick turning (though I probably shouldn’t do this, I’m bound to snap the cable one of these days… 
)
I drive a stick, the only problem I have when I need to an automatic is supressing the urge to clutch when I don’t needed to. This is usally not a big problem as just ened up kicking the floorboards. How ever there was once when I was driving my parents van (an automatic) that I tried to push the clutch and I thought it is bit father to left and higher then normal but did not let that stop me. Fortunately there was no one behind me as I fully applied the pedal activate parking brake.
So it is more of a problem of not doing things that have become all most second nature.
Congrats on learning the most fun way to get around!
But I’ll give you real props when you have to start on an incline when some jackass doesn’t realize that people still drive manuals pulls right up on your ass. Then they have the gall to honk at you when you don’t accelerate fast enough. I’m sorry, but I don’t have a torque converter that takes all of the work out of it! But that’s a thread for the pit.
You know what’s really cool? On Volkswagen TDI diesels there is a very interesting thing here too. They are so easy to learn on, want to know why? On a lot of older manuals, the idle speed is set by a certain value on a carburator or fuel injector. It is set to correspond to a certain RPM in neutral. Well, if you put it in gear and let off the clutch it will keep providing the same amount of gas. But on a car with electronic fuel control, it automatically puts in as much fuel as is needed to keep the RPM above a certain rate. In my car I can run through the gears to 5th gear using no gas at all.
But the best thing about a manual is being more in control of acceleration. I hate how in Automatics you have to just push in the pedal and not know which gear it will be in. Plus I do a lot of engine braking around turns which isn’t a good thing but is kind of a fun way to slow down.