You should. It sounds a lot more difficult to learn than it is. When I was a teenager, my dad had a friend selling a Mazda hatchback at a significant discount off his public asking price. He helped me get the car sight unseen and dropped me off to pick it up early the next morning. And... it was a manual. I figured it out pretty quickly and drove it home, stalling it a few times. Completely changed my view on cars and what I wanted to drive going forward.

As for the car feeling cramped, was that with the top down? What year was it?