The parking spot! There it is.

 

After rather mindlessly searching for a temporary home for your car for 12 to 46 minutes, you've found it. Your life has come to this: ecstasy reached upon finding a place to let your car just legally sit and wait for you.

 

And what an ample, buxom parking spot it is. There's plenty of room for TWO cars!! Even better! You can just pull in, frontwards! Right?! Easy, yeah?

 

Nah.

 

Pull up alongside the car just in front of the prodigious gap and put your ride in reverse. You're backing in.

 

Even when there's plenty of room to pull in front first? Yes. But why?! Parallel parking is the darkest roadway evil, right?! No.

 

But, sure, go ahead. Enter the spot in drive. Simply swing that front wheel at the exact right moment without jumping the curb. Go ahead.

 

That's right. We figured you'd balk. Serves your right. Because driving your car into a spot is harder than parallel parking it.

 

The prospect of parallel parking has ruined sleep the night before a driving exam. It's frustrated many a seasoned driver into feebly bailing mid-attempt. It's flummoxed even the most veteran of drivers. Parallel parking. Created by Satan. Admired by socio- and psychopaths.

 

But the reputation of the reverse park-job is bunk. The physics, more sound. The angles, more generous. The sight lines, my God, the sight lines. The room for trial and error!! The societal acceptance of its face-value complexity!! To err during the first entry is human!!

 

A mis-managed front-first park job? The pothole-like bump and bounce. Tire rubber screeching. Pedestrian judgement from all directions. It's damn well grounds for a moving violation. AND POINTS, JACK!!!

 

Don't even attempt a front-first. Even with a full block's worth of space, back that ass in!! 

 

It's worth the practice anyway.

 

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