Thursday, February 7, 2008

F.W.

I might later regret recounting this story on here later, but it is pretty funny, so I'll just hope I don't embarass myself too much. This Saturday I had an interesting experience. I was hanging out with a few of my friends and we decided to go back to my friend Mike's apartment to watch a movie. He lives in King Henry, so the parking is all on the side of the street. Bad news for someone like me who was never taught to parallel park. In Florida our driver's test is a joke. First of all, it's given in a parking lot. Second of all, we don't learn useful skills like parallel parking! Basically they make sure we can accelerate, do a three-point turn, and park in a parking space. This was great when I was sixteen, but now that I need to parallel park all the time I really wish things would have been different.
Anyway, on Saturday night we drove up and down the street looking for parking and there was absolutely nothing open. The only small space was currently being occupied by a motor scooter. After five minutes of searching we decided the best thing to do would be to temporarily move the scooter while I parked and then move it back after. So my roommate Brindi and my friend Mike got out of the car to do that and then I began parking. It was an extremely tight spot, though, and soon Brindi came to take over for me. I got out of the car and we were about to switch places when suddenly we noticed the car was reversing itself! Apparently I had never taken it out of reverse! (Yes, I know. I'm an idiot.) Instead of thinking rationally we both panicked. Neither of us knew who was going to get inside and put it in park, so we both tried to, but that obviously didn't work. Meanwhile, Mike stood helplessly in front of the car behind me, which happened to be his. At the last possible moment I pushed Brindi out of the way and slammed on the brakes.
We surveyed the damage. Both of the cars were fine, but my pride was not. Five cars had driven by during this episode and they had all seen the whole thing happen. I do hope that watching this happen made their nights, because they definitely laughed enough! Of course, after Brindi stopped laughing and parked the car we moved the motor scooter back in between our cars. It was the considerate thing to do, after all!

2 comments:

Brandon Pedersen said...

Man, driving troubles are the worst. Just a few things, think again of removing unnecessary words to tighten your prose and prevent breakages in your flow. Also consider adding in dialogue just to give variation to your voice.

Robert (Bob) Stewart said...

Very conversational voice.

Nice choice of stopping point with the scooter the "considerate thing to do, after all!" It feels like a natural shift in the conversation, or at least an invitation to change the subject.