By Alexia Boyarsky
You drive up to Coldwater Canyon and glance at the clock. It reads 7:28 a.m. The thought runs through your head that it is much too early to be awake, let alone driving to school. As you scan the road ahead of you, a disappointing sight comes around the bend. Cars are parked on the canyon all the way up to St. Michaelâs Church.
But the true disappointment comes when, while driving slowly down the street in a desperate attempt to find a spot, you pass at least five spots that could comfortably house a Mini Cooper. Your Land Rover, however, stands no chance.
With a resigned sigh you make the turn onto Halkirk, reconciled to being yelled at by security officer Sanders Jackson when you finally find a parking spot in front of a neighborâs house.
This problem arises almost every morning, as the parking spots lined up on Coldwater are taken earlier and earlier as more sophomores receive their driversâ licenses. But even if the problem is recurring, it is not unavoidable.
Understandably, parking close to other cars has its downsides. Getting out may be a bit harder, involving both backing up and then going forward for a change; however, there is no excuse for parking so far away that there is space for half of another car, for if you add up all of those three, four or even five foot gaps between badly parked cars, a bus could park on Coldwater, even at 7:30 in the morning.
The solutions are very simple. There are three of them.
First, you could go back to driving school and ask them how to park properly. I am aware that they do not test on parallel parking anymore, but that does not mean good parking has become obsolete. It is perfectly acceptable to park closer to the car in front of you, and I promise that you will not be ridiculed for it.
Secondly, all of the cars could park in an orderly manner, where the first person to get to school in the morning pulls up all the way to the North Gate. The second person pulls up all the way to the first car, and so on and so forth until every car is beautifully parked. If every person leaves two feet of space in front of their car, then there will not only be less parking problems, but there will be no problems with pulling out from the curb in the afternoon.
The last option is to use common sense. If you still do not feel like parking right at the front of the line, then at least step outside of your car and see how you have parked. If you can fit a tent in between your car and the one in front you, get back into your car and pull forward. There is no rule or law about how much space has to be in between your car and the next, but if you could make somebody elseâs life easier in the morning, why would you choose not to?
Without a doubt, the people who park too far away from the cars in front of them, and you know who you are, are not setting out to do malicious harm to their fellow students. However, the problem remains that there are simply not enough parking spots available on Coldwater to allow so much space to go to waste.
So the next time you are parking on Coldwater, please take into consideration the people who will have to park after you. You do not want to be stuck in the position of having to parallel park a car into a small spot during morning rush hour and neither do the rest of us. I believe that if we all use the space provided to us in a better manner and park just a bit closer to one another, fewer people will be scolded by Jackson every morning. And who does not think that is a good idea?
