Life - Two Small Lessons from the Blind Side Parallel
Posted: Wednesday, September 22, 2010
by Donovan Baldwin
No Diet 4 Me
I have been a soldier, accountant, restaurant manager, optician, and truck driving instructor, among other things. I have tried to learn from all my experiences, sometimes the lessons seem obvious to me but then, I am looking for them.
One experience that produced a couple of lessons was when I taught people to perform a blind side parallel parking maneuver with a tractor-trailer rig. It's called "blind side" because it is to the right, which many drivers will refer to with that term, since you cannot lean out the window on the right side and look and must rely on your "west coast" mirrors. To make things worse in a big truck, as the cab swings to the left to push the trailer, those mirrors give you no information at all, and you have to make things happen on your blind side by picking up cues on the left side.
However, we were usually pretty successful, and the reason is that the maneuver could quickly be learned, and executed, simply by learning a simple set of steps. Most students were surprised and happy to discover how easy the blind side parallel actually was once they learned this simple process.
Unfortunately, the blind side parallel, while required for students getting a CDL in Texas, was not a requirement to pass the course and get a job with the company I worked for. To do that, they had to be able to park between two trailers, and, to be successful in the actual job of truck driving, they had to be able to back up to a dock, often between two other trailers.
This was difficult for many students...much more difficult than the blind side parallel.
On more than one occasion, I took a student who had mastered the blind side parallel but who was having difficulty with the other backing requirement and drew them a series of pictures of the blind side parking maneuver and asked them to talk me through what they would do at each step. Once they did that, I erased the parts of the pictures showing the parking place and drew in its place two trailers parked on either side of where the parking place had been.
Most immediately saw that basically all they had to do was duplicate the steps of the blind side parallel to back into a parking place between to trailers or up to a dock.
Many people who arrived at our school had been talking to over-the-road drivers and they often arrived with a lot of negative impressions about the blind side parallel. The most common comment I heard was, "You'll never have to use it!"
Well, I had a few examples to combat that impression, but it was much better when I had an opportunity to show them the value of learning the maneuver. The little story above was one of the simplest ways to get the point across. In learning the easy, seemingly "useless" thing, they learned how to do the more difficult one...the one which could decide success or failure.
However, on more than one occasion a situation arose which made the argument for me.
One day, as I was having a student drive me around Dallas, we stopped at a parking lot to change drivers. During the drive, the student driving had been complaining about having to learn the blind side parallel, putting out the usual arguments that he had heard from "experienced" drivers. As we pulled into the parking area, which was deserted except for one pickup truck. I told the driver to set himself up for a simple back into a parking place.
Once set up and ready to back into a slot, the student said, "I guess that pickup pulled out. I don't see it any more."
I said, "You don't see it because it's directly behind you. If you back up now you'll be buying someone a new truck."
He looked at me like I was crazy. Then, he put it in neutral, set his brakes and stepped out of the cab. Sure enough, once outside the truck, he was able to see that he was about to back into the parking place where the pickup truck was parked.
Back in the cab, he was a little flustered because he realized that if he had just backed up he would have destroyed the truck, and, if someone had been in the truck, he could have killed them. He wasn't thinking straight, and asked, "What do I do now?"
I told him to look in his blind side mirror and asked, "Is anything in the parking place next to him on the right?"
There wasn't, so then I said, "Why not just do a blind side parallel and park in that place?"
He hesitated, looked at me for a second, and then laughed.
"Guess I was wrong."
Two lessons for me.
1. Sometimes what we learn in one area can be applied to another.
2. Sometimes, something that we consider "not worth learning", may just turn out to be very important after all.
Oh, what was my main example for getting people to understand that they would want to learn the blind side parallel?
Well, when you've been driving and drinking coffee, tea, or soda for a long period, jiggling around in a truck. you sometimes reach a rest area in a rather painful state. Often, the only parking place is to the right, between two other vehicles. At those times, the blind side parallel can seem a very important maneuver to have mastered.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Donovan Baldwin is a 65-year-old accountant, amateur bodybuilder, freelance writer, certified optician, and Internet marketer currently living in the Atlanta, Gerogia area. A University Of West Florida alumnus (1973) with a BA in accounting, he has been a member of Mensa and has been a Program Accountant for the Florida State Department of Education, the Business Manager of a community mental health center, and a multi-county Fiscal Consultant for an educational field office. He has also been a trainer for a major international corporation, and has managed various small businesses, including his own. After retiring from the U. S. Army in 1995, with 21 years of service, he became interested in Internet marketing and developed various online businesses. He has been writing poetry, articles, and essays for over 40 years, and now frequently publishes original articles on his own websites and for use by other webmasters. He has posted a series of articles on the Law of Attraction , and other self-improvement issues at xtramoney4me.net/internetmarketing/reviews/law_of_attraction_articles/index.html .
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