Parking Blues

"I don’t want to take this to the Post Office tonight yet," my coworker Ann groused to me, setting a package down as she put on her coat. "I’ll have to make a special trip!"

"What is it?" I asked.

"Oh, it’s a box Dr. G wants mailed to his brother," she replied grumpily.

It was late Friday night, and we had had a particularly tedious day putting up with our boss and all his eccentricities.

"I’ll take it," I said, ever the problem-fixer. "The mall has a mail drop off, and I go right by there anyway." Ann was only too glad to hand over the package to me. So off we went, looking forward to another wonderful weekend away from the job.

I swung my car into the mall parking lot. Yes, I could tell this was Friday night alright. It was packed! As I was in a hurry to get home, I decided to take the first available parking place I came to instead of my usual approach of trying to find the closest one. "The walk will do me good," I said to myself, adjusting my halo as I squeezed between my car and the next. It really was an unusually tight squeeze, and I saw that I really hadn’t done the best job of parking. My car was at a 30 degree angle across the parking place, and the tail end of the car was quite cozy with the tail end of the neighboring car. Just by looking at it, I could tell my car was more used to angled parking places than it was to straight ones.

Oh well, I thought. I’m just dropping this box off. I’ll be back out and gone before the owners ever get back out. They’ve parked this far out, so I’m sure they also just got here.
I walked the length of the parking lot in record time and approached the big glass doors of the Sears entrance. My eyes adjusted quickly to the bright lights of the mall’s interior. I double-blinked as I made out at the far end of the hall a lady gesturing frantically to me. Oh. What do you know? My aunt and uncle were standing there, smiling and waving. And their whole clan was standing right around the corner waiting, as it turns out, to surprise the oldest daughter for her birthday. As soon as was prudently reasonable, I hurried on, mailed the package, and made my exit. Truth be told, the "meeting" had delayed me considerably.

I was hoping I had picked the right aisle as I could see my car nowhere. As I approached the spot where I thought I had left it, I could see tail lights. Oh dear. I hoped the owners of THE car weren’t trying to leave. As it turned out, the tail lights did, in fact, belong to the very car I had trapped! Of course, I couldn’t tell for sure because of a very large luxury van parked several places this side of the "spot." I rounded the end of the van, and there I was. And there it was. And there they were. I heard my halo shatter as it struck the pavement.

Do you think the occupants could have been just one mature adult who could handle such a situation with grace? Well, it could have been, but it wasn’t. Four or five teenagers were crammed into this little car trying to maneuver its way out of the clutches of my Maxima. And they weren’t doing it quietly either. Cussing and exclaiming, they slowly crept out.

I was not about to admit the offending car was mine, and I couldn’t very well turn around and go the other way, so I immediately took up the role of a person waiting for them to finish backing out so I could pass on by...to get to my car at the very end of the lot, you see. I stopped right behind the rear end of my car, not even giving a flicker of recognition to the rude car who was taking up more than its fair share of space. My facial expressions were quite genial as I graciously motioned for them to continue their maneuverings. I was in no hurry; I could wait. I had all weekend, after all.

After many colorful comments and quite a few stares, the parting shot from the guy in the rear passenger’s seat was, "That’s the tightest parking place I’ve ever seen!" To keep up the pretense, I had to keep on walking once they’d gone. The teenagers kept looking back at me, after all, almost accusing in their stares. Why blame me??! And then they had to sit there at a stop sign waiting to pull out into traffic. Help. What to do? There were only about three cars left in the row. So I walked on by my car, willing those ruffians to leave and to do so quickly. And then I reached the end and was out of cars to walk by. Their car was still sitting there, and if I kept walking the course I was on, I’d soon be up even with them. Somehow, that wasn’t a good option either.

Reaching the end, I made moves as if to "unlock" the door of the car that was sitting there. However, I abruptly changed The Plan when I realized there was a lady sitting there in the car watching me. Ok. No problem. I immediately became the lady who forgot where she had parked her car. I made a point of scanning the parking lot as I waved pleasantly and nodded at the lady. I crossed over to the next row of cars, and headed back up toward the mall entrance, searching diligently for the car that would not be found. Halfway up, I decided this was beyond ridiculous. I needed to just count my losses, take my wounded pride and get home! My weekend was wasting away while I danced with parked cars!

I quickly crossed back over to where my car was parked, crawled in as fast as I ever had, backed out, and roared away, hoping my dust cloud was giving me some getaway cover. I’m sure the lady either had a wonderful chuckle over the whole thing or she was busy making sure her doors were locked and her alarm set. After all, you can never be too careful with all those crazy people out there.

And I remain convinced that there oughta be a law against straight parking places.