Friday, October 16, 2009

Me vs. the garage door

When they started predicting snow for the end of this week, I cleared the lawn mower and other miscellaneous crap out of the garage so I could pull the car in. Last night, with snow on the way, I pulled into the driveway, eyeballed the width of the garage door, eyeballed the width of my car and ....... went for the tape.

Now, I always thought that the cars were as big as barges back in the 50s, but evidently I was wrong, because my house was built in 1952-ish, and the garage door is eight feet wide. My car? From side mirror to side mirror, is six-and-a-half feet wide.

Which leaves me with, let's see, nine inches of clearance on either side.

How do I phrase this: I am, ummm ...... spatially challenged. It embarrasses me to admit this, but folks, I have a hard time aligning my car onto the rails at freakin' Jiffy Lube. When I BOUGHT this car, I had the salesman drive it off the showroom floor for me, fearing disaster if I did it myself.

It did NOT HELP that on the local news last night, they had video footage of a woman in my town who hit the gas instead of the brake when pulling into her garage, firmly embedding her car in her kitchen.

Can you imagine? It's bad enough that it happened, but then it made the local news. She's never gonna live that down. "Hey, Betty, could you grab me a cup of coffee while you're in there? Or, you know, change the oil?"

I do not want to make the local news. So what will I be doing this weekend? Practicing. Car in, car out. Car in, car out. And hopefully I won't be picking up pieces of side-view mirror from the garage floor. Or, you know, backing the car out of the kitchen.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

When it comes to my car, I'm only spacially challenged on the passenger side. The driver's side (my side) is much easier for me to comprehend. My advice is to just worry about the driver's side and that side of the garage. You can see your mirror and you can cut it a little closer on that side, knowing that you're leaving plenty of room on the passenger side. If you can just back out straight or as straight as possible, you should be all right. Should be :-)

rockygrace said...

Kit -

It worked! I pulled in and out watching the driver's side mirror, even rolling down the window for a better view, and I managed just fine. Woot!

Knowing myself, however, I'm afraid the day is coming when I start to back out without putting up the garage door first.