Rules to live by.

Rule 447: Don't park right in front of the bar. Walking, talking and managing not to trip over my feet is an art I am still mastering......parking is another. Meeting friends downtown I took a left to see if I could park in the well lit area since I was arriving by myself. Needless to say I found some rock star parking in front of the venue, but it came with a catch...parallel parking and applause. Yes, I said applause, I spent a goodly amount of time jerking my car back and forth into place until I finally emerged victoriously from my car. Needless to say this was one of those places with outdoor seating and every patron (50 people) took it upon themselves to cheer and clap boisterously over my lack of parking skills as I walked inside. Embarrassed, I think so! If you know me then you know that this form of parking is not my forte, and possibly my downfall. In college I would circle the lots in hopes of an empty spot, and more often than not the spot would be a parallel one. I would begrudgingly circle back in hopes of somehow lodging my vehicle unnaturally between the two prior parked cars....and chances are that I would realize that there was no way I was parking my hunk of metal. A few times I jumped to the passenger seat and begged a familiar face to do it for me. Three years of undergrad and 1.5 of grad school I still had not parallel parked my car once. Maybe it was growing up in small town America where a parking spot could just as easily be a field as lines on pavement or maybe it was my inability to maneuver in tight quarters...whatever the reason it has taken me a decade to learn to parallel....and just as I was thinking I had a handle on it I had to hand the wheel over to C two days ago. C'est la vie.