By Tobin Barnes
The last vestiges of the Wild West are alive and well in our parking lots, especially in the huge black tops of the big-box stores. Despite the yellow arrows, lines, and pedestrian walkways, they can be lawlessly uncouth places.
Sometimes, viciously so.
As if those expanses have been invaded by wild-eyed Italian Andrettis who transmogrified their dinky Fiats into big honking (literally) American SUVs.
Yes, it’s law of the jungle.
And the prey? Parking spaces.
(We’ve got a lard problem in this country, but it’s not going to be solved via walks from vehicles to stores. The only people willing to park any distance away are those who have just bought new cars, fearing the disfiguring dings. But even that precaution soon wears thin in the face of repeated fifty-yard treks in cold weather from the borderlands to shopping Nirvana.)
As to the viciousness, allow the experiences of a friend of mine to serve as a case study. I eat lunch with him every day at school, and I feel I have come to know him, as far as any one can be known while eating a sandwich.
He’s the idealistic type, and he believes in principles, believe it or not.
So on a recent Saturday, he and his wife were pulling into the parking lot at Walmart. It’s needless to further describe the disorganized hell they were entering on a Saturday before Christmas. But bravely he motored on, taking careful note of the lines and arrows, attempting to maintain some semblance of civilization in the midst of a manic free-for-all.
As he drove down a lane in the proper direction as per arrows, he encountered a knotty situation. A shopper was trying to leave a parking spot while two other vehicles blocked the way. One car, going in the same direction as my friend was trying to exit the parking lot altogether but was blocked by the other car coming from the “wrong” direction.
This miscreant vehicle was driven by a woman (which is neither here nor there). She had stopped and put on her blinker, indicating she wanted to take the space once the parked driver had left, even, presumably, if that meant making a big roundabout to come into the space from the wrong way.
So that was the situation as my friend entered the fray.
Before the driver in the parking space could leave it, way had to be cleared. That meant that the woman coming in the wrong direction and wanting the space had to back up so the car in front of my friend could pull around her and get out of the parked driver’s way and exit the lot.
Once that was done, the parking space was soon abandoned, and my friend thought this a perfect moment to educate his fellow man, or woman in this case. Before the woman who’d been blinking her signal light could make her massive roundabout and pull into the space, my friend pulled into it instead. After all, the blinking woman was violating parking lot rules and therefore could not be allowed to benefit from her utter disregard.
But “hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,” according to William Congreve. Of course, he was referring to affairs of the heart, but he might as well have been talking about parking spaces.
As my friend and his wife walked away from his now neatly parked car, the woman in the SUV rolled down her window and asked (in no kindly manner):
“Did you see me signaling to make a turn?”
“Yes,” my friend replied.
“Did you understand that I was here first and wanted that parking spot?”
“Yes,” he helpfully told her.
“You (unflattering noun that begins with a ‘b’)!”
“Yes,” he agreed, and they walked on to go about their business.
But it didn’t end there. Later, in the store, my friend and his nemesis met once again. As she approached and passed, she said to her companion, “There’s the (another unflattering noun) who took my parking space.”
Alas, such are the rewards of those unwaveringly devoted to educating their fellow man, or woman in this case.
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