I did not learn to park that day, but I did eventually become able to park at a level that satisfied my test administrator.  While I can’t say I consciously avoidPond Lane, I’m sort of glad fate never necessitates that I drive down it now.  I almost never parallel park.  I was right:  almost everywhere I’d want to go has a lot, and other times, as aforementioned, I just make someone else do it.  This isn’t super responsible but has so far worked out.  And driving here is really worth it, in ways I hadn’t known to anticipate: there’s convenience and independence, of course, but also the particular pleasure of knowing how street names symbolize actual streets that you can drive on, knowing the way they run, the best route, the thickly satisfying and pragmatic prosaicism of names like Little Fresh Pond Road, Pond Lane, a multiplicity of Main Streets.  I savor how quickly, driving around here, the road you’re on can end in a sudden vision of gleaming water, likePond Lanedoes, if I were ever on it.  And now, driving on 27 East in the kind of traffic that would frustrate either of my parents to tears, I feel completely a part of the driving community.  When others on the road falter I’m relaxed, thinking it’s possible that I’m not the worst driver out there, that somebody might even envy me, too.

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