When we visit our Chicago kids, we always park in the street. They each have a garage space for their car, parking garages aren't nearby, and even if they were, it would be very expensive to park in one.
My girls amaze me. They're parallel parking ninjas...masters of their environment. They can squeeze a car into a tiny spot in a back-in-straighten-it-out-motion. I need a few more attempts. If I don't have an audience, I can parallel park. It's the pressure of being watched or a car needing to pass by that puts me in a tizzy. Come to find out there's a word for the fear of parallel parking - parallelophobia. Hitting another car isn't the most common fear of parallel parking; it's holding up traffic. Having someone blast their horn while I'm trying to park is enough to make me say, "Forget this," and go find another spot. But deep breath, they can wait because chances are they'll never see me again.
You are not alone on this one. The parking test when I took the road test for my drivers license was literally, "get it onto the parking lot and get it stopped without hitting anything and you passed."
ReplyDeleteI bumped the curb on my first attempt, looked at the officer with panic in my eyes, and he said not to worry, you were close and make sure to check for traffic when you pull out. Whew!
DeleteParallelophobia.....I have it too!
ReplyDeleteKindred spirit!
DeleteMaybe you need one of those cars that can parallel park itself!
ReplyDelete