Reverse Parallel Parking

Need I say more? (Well, obviously, or I wouldn’t be writing this post, would I?)

I believe they recently discovered a gene for reverse parallel parking. It’s called the rpp gene. Of course, it’s recessive. For instance, my father has it; my mother obviously doesn’t. (She, in fact, belongs to the leave-it-where-it-rolls-to-a-stop school of parking.) So when it came to my generation, my sister got lucky, while I clearly didn’t.

It doesn’t mean that I absolutely can’t do reverse parallel parking. I can, but I suck at it. You know – I’m so scared I’ll hit something on this corner or that corner that for the life of me, I can’t do the “parallel” bit of it. (I also take certain liberties with the generally accepted definitions of “reverse” and “parking”.)

Not having the rpp gene doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t do reverse parallel parking at all; or even that you will always suck at it; as with health, intelligence, and jewellery, if you aren’t born with it, a lifetime of diligence and persistence can result in a modicum of success. But don’t get carried away with your modest successes; we unfortunate souls can never hope to compete with those who have it in their DNA.

One of the many blessings of riding a two-wheeler is that you never have to do reverse parallel parking. But now that my beloved Unicorn has passed on, and now that I’m going to be driving 200+ km per week for the next ten months or so, parking, or something like it, is bound to be an inevitable, inescapable part of my life. So, if you can’t avoid it, you’d better meet it head on, right?

So I squared my shoulders and went for it. There it was, a reasonable-sized spot right next to the drain outside the kids’ school. Apart from the drain, there was the car in front, the car behind, and a telephone pole to avoid hitting. Still, I managed it like a pro: I didn’t have to make multiple attempts, I didn’t hit or scrape anything, and, though I came pretty close, I even managed to avoid getting the rear tyre stuck in the open drain. Not bad! Now if only I could do it like that the other 99 tries in a 100.