When I took my New York road test in high school I had to parallel park and three-point-turn.
It was not a problem.
I moved to Mississippi, then Texas, then an island in Georgia where pull-in parking was an entitlement. For more than 20 years, parking lots and large driveways abounded. It was a given that each living person was entitled to at least an aggregate paved acre. Our vehicles, like us, had lots of room. When I worked in downtown Houston, I had a parking garage with an assigned space. In all these years of no-curb coddling, I lost the ability to parallel park.
This is not good for my new urban image. If I truly want to be a downtown dweller, I have to park on the street. While driving blocks and blocks to find a space with the extra room afforded by a nearby driveway or the bonanza of two open spaces ends up being good exercise, it is not amenable to arriving on time, dry or warm. It is particularly humiliating when you have a passenger.. who is generally too polite to scream and take the wheel on my 57th attempted pass into a space.
Last week we met my suburban McMansion brother and his wife at a nearby neighborhood restaurant before going to a concert. When my brother was running late I could hear his words echoing before he even arrived.
"You can have this city stuff. Do you know where I had to park?" he grumbled when he walked in the door.
I felt smugly urbane knowing that my car sat tucked neatly between two others curbside just a block away.
I didn't mention that Charlie drove.


Copyright 2005 Judi Griggs