14 September 2023
I don’t have any hard copies of the above illustration, but I’m tempted to get some. Awful people expose themselves in many ways. Bad parking is usually a sign of deeper pathologies. Or stupidity. Either way, they should pay for their offenses with the pristine finishes of their cars. My late commie “sister-out-law” told a story about a large logger who walked across the hood of a car in his hobnail boots after it had encroached onto the crosswalk. That’s the kind of spontaneous justice I crave.
The Wish: I like to imagine tungsten-carbide chainsaws emerging from under the lines in parking lots to rend the metal and rubber of offending vehicles. Put the saws on a timer, of course, so they’re mostly quiet. They should only emerge when the clock, sonar, and programming convince them that someone has parked (and not just passed) over the lines and therefore was encroaching on more than just his own space. Most vendors would probably find such a notion to be prohibitively expensive. But I’m going to keep on wishing. Meanwhile…
The True Story: I went to my local grocery connection a week or so ago. I rarely know when I’m going to be in a hurry, but I usually know when I’m not. I don’t like backing up my car. I can do it, of course; I can back a trailer down a winding gravel driveway, but it’s tedious and slow and more error prone than driving forward. In order to avoid backing up when I’m in a hurry, I tend to put the “hassle” up front, so if the parking spot only offers a single access to it, I’ll usually back in so I can just drive straight out if it turns out I AM in a hurry later. Even better are the adjoining spaces that most of the larger lots sport. Often I can drive straight through one and then I’m positioned to drive out of the other, all without putting it into reverse.
That’s the opportunity I found when I got to The Emir of Eats®. Except the front left corner of a huge pick-up truck was encroaching on the right front corner of my preferred space. Pausing briefly, I contemplated moving on to find another space, but was chastened by the firm economic principle that, “When we reward something, we get more of it.” I do not ever wish to reward misbehavior. I have a smaller car, I thought, so I can fit into that. I couldn’t get out my right door, but I wouldn’t need to. Satisfied that MY parking was within both the spirit of the lot AND the actual lines, I locked up and went shopping.
When I got back with my goodies, I saw that two other vehicles had parked behind ours, and that the driver of the pick-up had returned to his ride and was just sitting there glowering at me. Apparently, it looked to him that he couldn’t move forward without hitting me, or back out without hitting someone else. All resulting in damage to his precious “rig.” The nice thing about driving a “piece-of-shit” car like mine is you care a lot less about additional scrapes. Drivers of pretty new pick-ups are much less cavalier about the finishes of their rides. He sat there until I drove out of my space and released him from his self-made trap.