Top Ten Reasons Why I Suck At Parking

Dear readers, a confession (although for those of you who know me, this isn’t so much a confession as a statement of fact):

I suck at parking.

As I’m short on inspiration today I figured that I write a post about why that is… (NB I totally understand if you decide not to read on  - sounds boring right?)

Here goes <deep breath>

I suck at parking because:

1. I’ve never really learned how to do it properly. My poor, patient driving instructor Jeff was consistently baffled by my inconsistency when it came to parking. Truth is when I did it well, it was a fluke.  Plus, when you have to park for your driving test in the UK you get the mother of all parking spaces to park in. They say try not to use more than two car lengths when you park, but how often do you see a car parking space more than two car lengths long? It’s *easy* (well relatively so, even for me) to park in a space the length of a couple of HGVs - hence I passed my test.

2. I’m quite short and I find it hard to see where my car is in relation to the curb. Therefore I’ll often leave space enough for another car to park between mine and the curb… or (more often than not) I’ll just keep going until I hit the curb so I know I’m near enough to it.

3. When I first passed my test I always got my boyfriend to park my car for me <hangs head in shame> (sing it - ‘all you women who independent’ - and I’ll sit quietly in a corner)… so I never really practised and never really got any better at it.

4. What’s the point? Everywhere you go has valet. (OK that’s not true, and it’s a quote from Clueless - I lose all round)

5. I often avoid parking. What? How? Well I’ll often choose a nice, big, easy to park in space several streets away rather than the small, awkward one near my destination. Hence, because I rarely try to park in small spaces, when I do try I fail.

6. I often wear shoes I can barely walk in, to drive. And sometimes, I can’t really drive in them. This doesn’t really help my rubbish parking.

7. I get the fear over parking next to nice cars - I’m frightened that I’ll scratch them, or bash into them. Again this fear makes my already bad parking worse.

8. I can’t park with an audience. If there’s people in the car with me, or waiting for me to park, or just looking at me when I park, I get the fear and I can’t park.

9. My depth perception is rubbish. If I’m watching football, I always wait until other people cheer, so I know the ball’s definitely hit the back of the net, and they’ve not just crossed the ball in front of the box. (NB I’m not sure if depth perception really has anything to do with parking, but if it doesn’t, then it should do).

10. My Mother never loved me*

*Erm this is a lie, but lists of 10 are ‘better’ right?

Image credit Bashed 

NB this isn’t actually my parking - I wouldn’t have the gall to leave the car parked like that, instead I would drive my car backwards and forwards for about an hour (getting more and more red and embarrassed) to try to park properly. Smooth, huh?