Street Parking
I saw only one tiny vacant parking spot on the right side of the road, right near the address I needed to get to in the heart of Amsterdam. It did take some effort to park my car neatly in there. I took my time and watched my moves carefully. I heard two cars honking behind me and saw a couple of construction workers watching with broad grins. It was a pretty stressful moment. To my immense relief, I managed to maneuver the car neatly into the spot in one go. As I got out, I heard a construction worker say, “Wow, that woman sure knows how to park!” The smile on my face hasn’t left me all day.
Parking Garages
In parking garages, the trouble often starts as soon as I pull in, because my arm is too short to press the intercom button or grab a ticket. I unbuckle my seatbelt and carefully open the door so I don’t bump into anything. When driving into the garage, I usually have to adjust to the lighting before I can start looking for a spot. While looking for a spot in a parking garage at a company in Gouda, I noticed that all the concrete pillars were wrapped in foam rubber mats in the same purple color as the company’s logo. It looked cheerful, but it turned out to serve a practical purpose as well. The mats were covered in colored streaks of paint from the many cars that had bumped into them. Without hitting the mats or anything else, I parked my car. My client, who came over to help me park, paid me a huge compliment: “Just look at that—what others can’t do with two eyes, she can do with just one.”
Less successful
Ever since I’ve been seeing out of only one eye, my fear of heights hasn’t gotten any better. That can be pretty tough sometimes, like in that six-story parking garage in Zeist. I drove into the garage looking for an open spot, but I didn’t find one until the sixth floor, on the roof of the garage. When I got out of the car, I didn’t feel well, and I shuffled, trembling, along a wall toward the open staircase in the glass stairwell. I started to panic because I didn’t dare go down those stairs. Suddenly, a very large, broad man walked past me to go down the stairs. The man completely blocked my view! Without a moment’s hesitation, I crept after him. I breathed a sigh of relief when I reached the ground floor! After the day’s classes were over, my client asked where I had parked my car. And that’s when I realized I’d have to go all the way back up to get my car. I just didn’t dare do that. I sheepishly told my client, and to my great relief, he said very kindly, “Would you like me to go get your car for you?”
Narrow Street
My Kids like to joke about my poor eyesight and the stressful moments I have in traffic. One of them sent me a photo of his car in a very narrow street in Italy, asking, “Could you get through this without damaging the car, Mom?” I didn’t answer.
Anita Hol-Bubeck
