I wasn’t expecting to get the call, so when the phone rang right after I got out of the shower early this morning around 7:15AM, I was shocked. It was urgent, and the person on the other end informed me that I am needed to report down to the New York Mets spring training camp in Port St. Lucie, Florida - promptly at 8AM tomorrow. I already have a 2 O’clock flight booked.

I haven’t played since little league, so this call was a real shock, and I think the call had something to do with my making a great play when I was 12 years old, playing for the Falcons, and it made the local free neighborhood paper.

I’ll be playing 3rd base, filling in for David Wright, who was injured when he broke his hand in a bar fight last night – KIDDING! Wright’s actually the newest POW in what is only the latest skirmish in the demilitarized zone separating both North and South Korea.

Pardon the pun, but let’s just say that Wright’s going to be a little tied up to be playing 3rd base this year.

Seriously, I got a call from my mother saying that she had completely forgotten about alternate side of the street parking today, that she was up at my sister’s house, and her car was on the wrong side of the street. As such she inquired if I could move her car to a “safe” side of a street.

My mother is ten times more neurotic than I am, and was noticeably nervous in her voice at the thought of me driving her car, even if it was only across the street, I know this based on her babbling the same things over and over five times before I cut her off. She had been explaining on how “alternate side of the street parking works” despite my having spent my entire life seeing how the process works.

She even still uses the “Club” to ward off potential car thieves, despite the fact that the lock doesn’t work anymore, so it is really just for show, the same thing as someone placing an “ADT” protection sign in their front lawn and hope for the best, but enough about her.

For those who aren’t familiar with my driving record, I drove last summer for the first time in eight years. If you want you can read all about it in this here post, and at no point during that driving experience had I parallel parked, which is the only way to park legally on the streets of my neighborhood.

This meant that I would have to attempt my first parallel parking job since 1998, I vaguely remember being instructed on how to go about this back then, and haven’t used it since I never had an opportunity to.

I was up for the challenge, got dressed, moseyed on over to my mom’s place, picked up the keys, found her car, got in, and then couldn’t figure out how to get the windshield washers to work – the windows were all full of morning dew.

After three minutes that seemed like life sentences in jail of me feeling more lost than a person from Kentucky straight off a bus in Times Square, I gave up and tried to call someone for help. The phone began to ring, and then magically, I flipped the stick on the right hand side of the steering column, and the windshield washers magically moved, cleaning off the morning due.

I was so happy that I honked the horn in victory.

I placed the car in reverse, backed up a bit, then drive and got out in one clean shot. I began to drive up the street, until I became annoyed at some loud ringing sound. I looked around and found a red flashing light on the console.

“What the hell is that blinking?” I thought. The blinking red light looked like something I would find on clothing, and it appeared as though the car was telling me to wash it in luke warm water, and then press it off using the iron on its steam setting.

Why don’t cars just speak English?

Then realized that I don’t really know how to drive, since I didn’t take off the brake in between the two front seats, which was the cause of the blinking red light, and annoying beeping. I’m not even sure what this brake is actually used for, other than to make people feel stupid for not knowing about its existence until after they drive100 feet.

None of the GTA games have this unneeded brake in their cars, because it is a pointless brake, and so I simply didn’t know that it existed in real life.

I made a right turn and ended up at a stoplight. My driving was anything but a smooth journey up until this point – it was very jerky, and a little bit swervy.

At this same light, there was a NYPD van facing me. I got worried that I would get pulled over for driving dangerously, and have the cops expecting a 14 year old kid to be the one who was driving, then laugh at me when they saw how pathetic it was for a man who’s had a license for eight years to still drives like it’s his first time.

I played it cool, and by cool, I mean I sweated like a marathon runner.

This sweating technique of mine worked to a tee, and I was able to slip away from the cops unnoticed.

Another right turn of a poorly judged 90-degree angle, and I crawled in the car looking for a spot. I knew that I would have to take the first spot I saw, and keep attempting to park the car until I ran out of gas, or got it in the spot.

Nothing on the first block, so I went down another block, where I found an open spot.

It was the Cadillac of parking spots, having a double driveway in front of it, leaving roughly 25 feet for me to maneuver the car parallel to the sidewalk, and then into the spot.

Five minutes, and a half a gallon of sweat later I thought was in. I got out to inspect my beautiful handiwork and found that I was still four feet into a driveway.

This must have been God’s vengeful nature on me for all those times that I laughed at out of towners struggling to get into any parking spot in the city.

Two minutes late I found myself up in the spot, but up on the curb, I couldn’t live with this. Two more minutes of finagling the car forward and reverse and I was spent.

If this was last year when I was unemployed, my driving two blocks would have been all that I could have done in one day, and the rest of my day would have consisted of naps to build up my strength again so that maybe I would be able to go out to the post office the next day, instead I’m at work today.

Happy Monday – I need a shower!