Fielding Questions About How I Parallel Parked The Big Bus At Work This Week

Previously in big bus news: “Driving the big bus makes me feel like a character in Richard Scarry’s Busytown, alive with purpose, and surrounded by co-laborers who manage to unite both ease and zeal in their activities of daily living. Or like a happy version of the sad butler from The Remains of the Day, where I am married to my professional duties, instead of to Emma Thompson.”

Word has gotten around lately that I successfully parallel parked the big bus at work this week. In the interest of saving time and man-hours I thought I would compile a list of the most frequently-asked questions I’ve been receiving here, that future inquirers might be able to acess all the relevant information more conveniently.

QUESTION #1: How long was this decision in the works? Was there a planning committee, and if so, who served on it, did you follow Robert’s Rules of Order, Erskine May’s Parliamentary Procedure, or an alternative decision-making process, etc?

ANSWER: It was entirely unplanned.

QUESTION #2: You mean this was a spur-of-the-moment action — a course was decided upon, committed to, successfully carried out, solely by yourself, all while you were already behind the wheel of what can only be called a very big bus?

ANSWER: The bus is, in fact, so big that it beeps whenever you put it in reverse.

QUESTION #3: That big?

ANSWER: So big that sometimes, when I have pulled up alongside a city bus at a stop light, the city bus driver has glanced out his window at me and offered me the courtesy head nod customary between bus drivers.

QUESTION #4: Surely not.

ANSWER: It has happened on more than one occasion! A deliberate, willful head nod, with conspicuous friendly eye contact. There could have been no mistaking it.

QUESTION #5: An accordion bus?

ANSWER: No, not yet an accordion bus. But a real city bus nevertheless.

QUESTION #6: Remarkable!

ANSWER: Thank you.

QUESTION #7: This was a nose-forward parallel parking job, I assume? With plenty of room — say, a half block or so — between the cars in front and behind?

ANSWER: I parallel parked it in reverse.

QUESTION #8: On a side street?

ANSWER: A busy thoroughfare.

QUESTION #9: And no one honked at you for taking up more than your share of the lane…?

ANSWER: I did not take up more than my share of the lane. I parked it in a single go, with no redundant returns into the flow of traffic to correct my positioning.

QUESTION #10: Successfully parked, in reverse, a 10-passenger van on the spur of the moment, in the middle of heavy traffic?

ANSWER: Let us say moderate traffic. No more than moderate

QUESTION #11: Thank you for your commitment to honesty, even at the moment of your greatest triumph.

ANSWER: Thank you.

QUESTION #12: Close to the curb, and everything?

ANSWER: Less than six inches from the curb. It was textbook. I tell you, it was a textbook parking job on a 10-passenger bus with a nine-foot clearance. And this time a year ago I could not have taken such a bus out of the alley without scraping the dumpster, or the retaining wall!

QUESTION #13: Did anyone see you do it?

ANSWER: Not anyone I know.

QUESTION #14: I’m so sorry.

ANSWER: Please, don’t be. It was nothing. It was nothing.

QUESTION #15: What did you do afterwards?

ANSWER: I called one of the residents on my private cell phone to tell her what I had done. And I knocked on my general manager’s door, interrupting a meeting, to tell her.

QUESTION #16: Only human!

ANSWER: I very nearly called my mother, who I hate, such was my ebullience.

QUESTION #17 [alarmed]: But you didn’t —?

ANSWER: No, I remembered in time why I hate her. But it was a very near thing, I can tell you. And no one is going to be able to say a word of criticism to me for a month at least.

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