Gen Z College Student Blames ‘Girlhood’ For Letting A Random Man Parallel Park Her BMW After Trying Herself For 15 Minutes
Do we really need to know how to parallel park anymore?
dean bertoncelj | Shutterstock Everyone has aspects of “adulting” that they struggle with. Some skills just come more naturally than others.
One often-complained-about skill is parallel parking. Many people do not like to parallel park, even if they previously learned to do so. Such is the case for one young woman on TikTok.
The college student tried to parallel park for 15 minutes before letting a random man step in and park her car.
The gen-z woman has gone viral on TikTok for sharing what she did when she wasn’t able to parallel park herself.
“Girlhood is accepting a random man’s offer to parallel park your car because he saw you on the verge of tears trying for 15 minutes,” she wrote.
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The picture of the man parking the car, which she shared in a TikTok slideshow, has gotten over seven million views on the app.
While it’s certainly an amusing story to share after the fact, this could have led to a bad situation for the college student. There was a “random man” in her car with the keys. He easily could have stolen her car and driven away.
Thankfully this young woman and her car are both safe, despite the possible hazards. And, she has a funny picture to show for it.
Evidence shows drivers are not very fond of parallel parking.
This woman is not alone in her feelings about parallel parking. A survey of 1,000 Americans conducted by The Zebra found that 49% of people are afraid of parallel parking. Only 53% of drivers feel “very confident” in their ability to parallel park.
Drivers may be getting a bit of a reprieve from parallel parking, though. While there will likely always be those spots in cities where you can only get your car in through parallel parking, it’s not a requirement on the driving test in every state.
According to USA Today, Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Nebraska, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, South Dakota, Virginia, and Wyoming no longer require parallel parking as part of their test to receive a driver's license.
How Stuff Works speculated that the decision for some states to not include parallel parking in their driving test has to do with new technology making it almost obsolete. Or, as they said, “outdated.”
Parallel parking isn’t the only skill that appears outdated.
A Reddit user asked others what skills they felt older generations excelled at, or at the very least had to have a knowledge of, that younger generations do not. The answers were interesting.
A response that came up multiple times was writing in cursive. It’s true that cursive writing is not seen as frequently today while learning it was required of older generations.
One user went even more basic and said, “Punctuation and sentence structure in general.”
Other car-related skills that came to mind for Redditors were “driving stick shift” and “map reading.” One user expressed concern that many young people are unable to get around without the help of some kind of GPS.
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There was one less tangible factor that many users focused on: communication. With so many technological advancements that allow us to communicate easily without really talking, some feel younger generations have lost this art.
Things have changed greatly across generations, and younger people just don’t need the same skills that older people have in many cases. That’s not wrong; it’s just a fact. Truthfully, there are equally as many skills younger generations excel at that many older people don't bother to learn.
Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer for YourTango who covers entertainment, news and human interest topics.