#936 Perfect parallel-parking on the first try

Neil Pasricha

Have you ever been driving down a busy, two-lane road with cars parallel-parked on both sides and a long line of people driving in front of you and behind you? I have, and I tell you: it’s a terrible feeling.

Most of the time I’d rather drive right on by a plum parking spot rather than face The Audience, the group of cars driving behind me and strangers walking beside me that stop to briefly witness the awkward reality show known as Anyone Else’s Parallel Parking Attempt.

Yeah, my stomach gets knotted up and I lose confidence in my abilities to pull it off. I know the people behind me aren’t just watching me, either. No, they’re judging me too — since the quality of my parking has a direct affect on the length of their drive. If I suck, they wait, and they know it. They stare at me coldly, locking glances tightly with mine through the rear windshield, just daring me to pull it off.

Then finally I give it a go, in one of two ways:

  1. The Driving School Method. This is where you really don’t pay much attention to your car or the space you have to fit into. You just follow the book — pull up beside the car in front of the spot, put it in reverse and spin the wheel until you’re forty-five degrees out into the intersection, and then keep backing up while quickly spinning the wheel the other way really fast. If all went well, you should end up right in the spot perfectly. Then again, this method is equivalent to building an IKEA bookshelf using the instructions only, without pausing to evaluate your work throughout the process. You might just finish and then stare up at the crooked, unbalanced pile of plywood you just nailed together, and wonder what went wrong.
  2. The Advanced Spatial Skills Method. There’s no rhyme or reason to this one. You don’t do anything, except size up the space, and then fiddle and turn your wheel until you fit in. You’re just really good at aiming a big piece of metal into a small square hole, really. You’ll go in any which way you can and then it’s presto, finished, simple as that. People who can do this amaze me, because I cannot do this.

No, for me it’s the Book Method all the way. I have no choice. Of course, I obviously do something wrong, since I usually end up a good three feet away from the curb. Then I’m forced to try frantically to “drive in” to the spot with an awkward twelve-point turn, failing to properly understand the impossibility of this manouver each time. Eventually I just give up and speed off, fleeing the scene and distancing myself from this horrible embarrassment as quickly as possible.

I guess that’s what makes it so great when you really do nail that parallel-parking job on the first try. When you pop into the spot perfectly and tightly — like a battery into a remote control — you get a huge high, a smile reveals itself on your face, and there’s an extra spring in your step. Yeah, there’s really nothing quite like it. The other cars behind you zoom ahead, happy to keep moving, but a little upset you got the spot and they didn’t. And sometimes, if you’re really lucky, an old guy will stumble out of the nearby restaurant patio he was watching you from, extend his hand, and say “Sonny, now that was impressive.”

AWESOME!

Get in there...

Wow!

We just got word that The Journal of Awesome is already in its third printing! It’s only been on stands a couple of months so let me just say thanks to all the other awesome writers out there enjoying jotting down their awesome thoughts.

The Journal of Awesome is 176 pages and you flip through the first few pages here. Order it from here, here, or here! (and psst… try the code ‘Awesome’ at the checkout of that last link for a secret discount!)

Neil

Photos from: here and here

24 thoughts to “#936 Perfect parallel-parking on the first try”

  1. Ahh, that is definitely a sweet feeling. My sister recently told me that whenever she visits, she tries to park “better” than me, because, to quote her, “You park so insanely close to the kerb that it feels like a challenge has been laid.”

      1. Yup, because, as the eggheads at Wikipedia tell me:

        A curb (US English), or kerb (UK English), is the edge where a raised pavement/sidewalk/footpath, road median, or road shoulder meets an unraised street or other roadway.

        And we Aussies tend to follow England’s spelling. (:

  2. What’s white, black and red, zig-zags-zooms, smiles from bumper to bumper and perfectly parallel parks every time, using a four letter “F” word?
    Why it’s my daughter in her brand new FIAT!
    (gotcha’!:)

      1. Oh ya, and you really should see how many smiles really are bumper to bumper and within her little FIAT. Last time we counted, about 9 or 10! Shiney Happy People designed that car, for sure! *Bekah’s blog knows…right, Bekah?!:)

    2. It really is amazing that words can be written in such beautiful pictures! I’m sorry you don’t know English, too, as I imagine you have much to share with us. Maybe some kind of translator can be used?

  5. Oh…I love that picture of the blue car. That looks like something I would do! I’ve only parallel parked once and that was for my test. I did it perfectly, but after that, no more. I always find somewhere else to park that doesn’t require much skill. I don’t mind to walk a little further if it means I don’t have to try to parallel park.

    1. I guess I do sorta parallel park, but I pull in nose first and adjust from there. If I can’t pull in nose first… I move on.

  6. I can’t drive yet. This seems like a pretty awesome thing, though, because everyone always makes it sound really hard.

    1. I can’t really say that it was too hard the one and only time that I did it. I did actually attempt it once at my grandmas house, but I don’t think the space was big enough for my boat of a car and I ended up in her yard! Its just easier to avoid it altogether than to try to figure out if I can still do it.

  8. I ‘ve never really had a problem parallel parking. I consider it a challenge to see how perfectly I can park in the available space; however, I’m not one of those who try to fit into the smallest possible space. I saw a video online of a car parking in a space so small there were only inches to spare! WOW!

  9. I love parallel parking! I consider it an art! If we have to parallel park somewhere my husband makes it my turn to drive. I lived in an apt over a funeral home and next to a catholic church on a busy main street so I learned how to squeeze in and out of anywhere! When I was teaching my son to drive I would make him drive around until we found “characters” hanging out on a porch step….then I’d say, park here! I’d tease him saying ‘this is life or death, if you hit someone’s car the guys will come down and beat you up”. His friends thought it was such a funny idea that they begged me to take them driving too, and I did. :-)

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