My greatest fear living in NYC

Before I moved to New York, I tried to imagine all the fears I would be forced to face: riding the subway alone, getting lost, rats… But I never suspected what has come to scare me the most. Parallel parking.

When I was 16, my driver’s training instructor taught me how to pass the test to get my license. I practiced parking between poles, and he had little tricks about where I would see the poles in my windows. It was fool proof. The test wasn’t a problem. But like other times in my life when I studied for the sole purpose of passing a test, once I got my license, I never used what I learned again. For one thing, it only worked in the car I learned in, which was also the car I used for my test at the DMV. This was not a car I ever drove after that.

For more than fifty years I managed to avoid parallel parking. There was always plenty of room on the street, or there were parking lots. But with my move to Queens, those days are gone. So here I am, living in constant fear of being forced to squeeze into a tight space between two cars.

One night last week, I had to go to Home Depot. The good news was that they have a parking lot. The bad news, that it was dark and misty out, which is always a challenge for my aging eyes. (I actually only have vision out of one eye so have no depth perception, even in daylight hours.) When I came home, I pulled into our driveway to drop off my purchases and then move my car to the street. (It’s a shared driveway and so narrow that I can only pull in as far as the driveway between the houses actually begins to drop things off.)

We live up the block from a fitness center, which gets so busy at night that there’s absolutely nowhere to park. I drove around a bit and found a space that looked like a definite maybe. When I pulled in, I turned too far and no amount of going back and forth was going to get me into the space. Meanwhile, three cars were waiting to go around me. With sweat dripping down my face and heart racing, I panicked and vacated the spot. Then I found another one, not too far up the street, and it looked a little bigger. This time I went up over the curb, and again, cars were waiting to go around me, and I gave up. I drove around the block and found nothing doable for me with my limited skills—that is, nothing either at least the length of two of my cars or on the end of the block. So, I drove around another block, and another one after that. Finally, I found a place about a quarter of a mile away. As I emerged from the car, tears of frustration were streaming down my face. I felt completely defeated.

Gretchen and Jon had helped me unload and couldn't figure out why it was taking me so long to park my car. Then they saw how frazzled I was when I walked in the front door. "Why didn’t you call us so we could park the car for you?" they asked. Well, I thought of that, but I didn’t have my phone with me because… I was just going to park my car! And although they might have rescued me that night, that didn’t really solve my problem. Could I be any more pathetic? How was I ever going to survive in NYC if I couldn’t park my damn car?!

The next morning, I woke up determined to conquer my problem. For several hours I watched YouTube videos about parallel parking. I took notes and quickly noticed that every single video offered different advice. It seems that there is no easy step-by-step method for parallel parking the way I learned it in driver’s training as a kid. It all depends on the size of your car, the size of the other cars, the height of the driver, so many variables… Ugh.

I keep working on it and trust that by practicing through trial-and-error and enduring repeated humiliation, eventually I'll get there. Right now, my theme song is, “If I can park it here, I'll park it anywhere. It’s up to you, New York, New York!” I’m hoping I’ll be able to stop singing it in time for Christmas Carols.