Thursday, January 11, 2007

As I get older, I've realized we are all born with certain gifts. What is so wonderful, everybody's gifts are different, we are all unique in our talents. I had an epiphany this evening. I know what my gift is. I have no idea what took me so long to come to this conclusion..it's something I've been doing since I was sixteen. If there were competitions based on degree of difficulty and awards given for this gift, my mantel would be covered with trophies.

What gift am I talking about?

I am the world's best parallel parker! When I was learning how to drive in high school, this was a skill I picked up on immediately. I have great depth perception and excel at spatial relationships. We did not get to practice very much in driver's ed but I wasn't worried. When I took the driver's exam, I pulled it right in the space! Now I have to say, living in St. Louis at the time, there was not a lot of call for parallel parking but when I moved to NYC, HELLO...parallel parking everywhere!

Okay, I drive a smaller car (Geo Prism - manual of course) but I get to practice my skills a few times a week playing the opposite side of the street parking game. You can only park on certain sides of the street depending on the day. New Yorkers in general are not so good at fitting their vehicles properly on the street. This creates a problem of odd sized spaces along various streets. The bigger cars and SUVs are unable to fit in these odd spaces. The great thing about having a smaller car is it can sometimes fit in these spaces that the other cars can't. I can get into the tightest of spaces and fit my car with mere inches to spare. When it's that tight, I may have to scoot back and forth several times to inch it in but if it will fit, I'll get it in the space. Perhaps I should start a competition so I can show off my skills. Any takers?

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