Its funny that you mention some lady rolling back into you. My boyfriend in college tried to teach me to drive his manual (a beat up rust bucket of a Datsun 510 whose clutch was nearly gone), and to this day I remember sitting at a stop sign trying to figure out how to convince the guy behind me to just go around because I was afraid that I would roll back into him when I tried to go. He didn’t, I didn’t, but the lessons on using a stick-shift didn’t go much further.
The funny thing is that my Mom tried to teach me to drive her manual last year, and frankly, I would have been better off if the lessons had come >after< I took the MSF class a few weeks later. For her, the techniques involved with friction zone, clutch control, etc were so ingrained that she didn't know how to explain what I was doing wrong. I’ll stick with my automatic, thank you very much. I don’t think that not having the skills for driving a manual transmission car really negatively affected my ability to learn to ride enough that I would stigmatize it.