Parking lot mishap crashes into columnist’s memory banks
My friend, Tricia, was chatting with me on Bluetooth, when the incident occurred.
“I can’t believe it,” she said. “I’m sitting in an empty parking lot and this goofball just pulled up on top of me! How am I supposed to open my car door?”
“Very carefully,” I joked, but my pal didn’t chuckle. No one likes a lousy parker. I should know because I am one.
My first foray into lousy parking occurred when I was in high school.
Per my driver’s training instructor, Mr. Price: “Miss Meehan, not only are you terrible at parallel parking but you can’t stay in your lane. In good conscience, I don’t know how I can pass you.”
When a turtle ran out in front of the driver’s training car, I swerved wildly to avoid it and my F in the class was secured.
At age, 18, I finally got a driver’s license. And at age 19, I nearly killed Arthur.
Arthur was the name of my friend Kevin Link’s car, a coppery brown Chevrolet Camaro. At the time of the accident, Kevin was a Pizza Hut cook and I was a Pizza Hut waitress. I was pulling into the restaurant’s nearly-empty parking lot before my shift, when I spied Kevin standing next to Arthur.
“I kept waving my arms at you,” Kevin would tell me later.
“Yes, I thought you were saying ‘hi.’” I said.
“No, I was trying to flag you down,” he said with tears in his eyes. He knew I was a lousy driver. He also knew I wasn’t wearing my glasses. To some, a car is just a car. But to 17-year-old Kevin, Arthur was family.
He had scrimped and saved to purchase him. He polished him daily. He loved him like a son.
Crunching Arthur’s door panel — while attempting to park alongside him in an empty parking lot — was one of my all-time driving lows.
This was back in the 80s, when paying cash to repair a car door cost about $500. For the next several weeks, my pizza-slinging paycheck would go toward putting poor Arthur back together.
Before long, he was good as new. Kevin instructed me to always park on the opposite side of the lot from him — and you’d better believe I did.
Fast forward to 2021. Thirty-plus years later, I’m still not a great driver. Since our marriage, my husband has kept track of all the parking blocks I’ve kissed and the number isn’t pretty.
Is it any wonder I sympathize with bad drivers?
Except for the one who parked on top of my pal, Tricia, of course.
“Maybe you should exit on the passenger side,” I told her.
“Naaah. I’ll manage to get out,” she said.
A tight squeeze for her sparked some old memories for me. You can thank a bad a driver for that.
