I failed my driving test the first time because of a mailbox. Not a person, not a curb, a mailbox, which did not move, was clearly marked, and had apparently been sitting in that exact spot since before I was born. I want to say it came out of nowhere. It did not come out of nowhere. I came out of nowhere, at the mailbox, in a Honda Civic that was not mine.
I bring this up because I am now, at the age of thirty four, trying to teach my nephew Malik how to parallel park, and it turns out the universe has a sense of humor about these things.
Malik is sixteen and supremely confident in the way that only someone who has never actually been responsible for anything can be. He got behind the wheel of my car, adjusted the mirrors like a fighter pilot, and said, “This is basically just like the video game.” I told him it was not basically like the video game. He told me the video game had “way stricter physics” than I was giving it credit for. I did not know how to respond to that, so I put on my seatbelt very slowly, the way you do when you are buying time to reconsider your life choices.
We drove to the empty side of the grocery store parking lot, where I had set up two orange cones I borrowed from my brother in law, who does construction and did not ask why I needed them, which I appreciated. The idea was simple. Pull up next to one cone, reverse at an angle, straighten out, end up between the two cones without touching either one. I demonstrated it myself first, smoothly, the way a responsible adult does when he wants to look impressive in front of a teenager.
I hit the cone.
Not hard. But I hit it, and it went down, and rolled a little, and Malik, who up until this point had said almost nothing, laughed so hard he had to put his head against the window. “You said this was the easy part,” he said, wheezing. I explained that everyone hits a cone sometimes. He said, “You’ve had your license for eighteen years.” This was not helpful information for him to have at that moment.
We reset the cones. It was his turn. He pulled up too far, reversed too sharply, and ended up at a forty five degree angle that would have made sense in absolutely no universe involving a legal parking spot. He tried again. He clipped the cone with the back bumper, gently, and looked at me like he expected to be told he’d failed some cosmic test. I told him that was actually closer than what I’d done, which was true, and also the kind of lie a good uncle tells.
By the fifth try, something clicked. He pulled up, turned the wheel at the right moment, and slid in clean, both cones untouched, dead center. He put the car in park and just sat there for a second, stunned by his own competence. Then he turned to me and said, completely seriously, “Don’t tell my mom I hit a cone first.”
I told him I wouldn’t, on one condition. He had to actually thank the cone for its sacrifice. He looked at me like I’d lost it, then rolled down the window and said, out loud, to an inanimate orange cone in a grocery store parking lot, “Thank you for your service.” A woman walking to her car very slowly changed direction.
He passed his real test two weeks later. Parallel parking, apparently, was his best section. He texted me a single word: “Cone.” I have never been prouder of anyone for anything.
I still owe my brother in law an explanation for why one of his cones came home with a slight dent in it. I’m telling him it was Malik.
