Where is my Parking Space?
In my continued disconnect from the human race, I find myself building new walls while discovering assholes from the outside bashing down the old walls. One of the glorious walls that I have built deals with my car and driving my car. There are rules on the road. I may not be perfect, but I do try to obey as many of these rules as I possibly can while I am sober behind the wheel. I also, stupidly, expect other people to obey those rules. I am constantly reminded of my folly as I cruise America’s highways and byways.
When I am driving a car, I am just a plain old joy to watch; cursing at the other drivers, mouthing off to them at lights, telling stories about people walking down the street to the passengers who are unlucky enough to be in my car. I have been in a few fights because of my vehicular antics, I have also, one time, been shot at.
That is neither here nor there. Or, it may be a story for another day. The story I am going to relate now is of a different order…but it still pisses me off just the same. It deals with my neighbors and my neighbor’s complete lack of tact when it comes to using the parking lot attached to my apartment building. Like the road, I also feel that there are some unwritten rules of parking lots where a person lives. Mostly my parking lot diplomacy is on the order of “first come, first served.” Unless you live in a parking lot that has designated spots for each unit, I figure just about everybody else feels the same way I do. If there is a spot free in the lot, and you like that spot, you take it, right? Nobody else has a claim on that spot, and nobody usually will resent your parking lot choices to the extent where they will cause you bodily harm (unless you live in Detroit).
What kind of story could wind up in a parking lot with the discussion of bodily harm, you might ask. You might also ask what kind of shenanigans could get me shot at as well, but my only answer is a shrug of the shoulders and a small, but knowing smile. You see, this sort of stuff happens to me all the time and I just can’t figure out why it does…surely I’m not so much a smartass or a thug that trouble actually goes looking for me? Surely not!
This story, like I claim, takes place in my parking lot. What I failed to mention is that it takes place in the wee hours of the morning. It also takes place all day, but it was by shear chance that I actually noticed it first on a Sunday morning around 4:00am. Okay, so I had to make ready my car for the day ahead. I had to go out when my engine was cool and add some antifreeze and water to my radiator because it was leaking. Yes, I had fixed the major leak, but I am still missing one someplace and I am too lazy to crawl under that beast again with a flashlight and my tools. So there I am, 4:00am and I am holding a gallon jug of water in one hand and I am opening the hood of the truck with the other.
I hear voices. My parking lot is not overly big, but owing to lax property management, the lot is exceedingly dark…especially at night. These voices are coming from the other end of the lot and I am wondering who, besides myself, could be out at this retarded hour of the day. Who could be hanging out in a group (I did say voices) at this dim (in more ways than one) hour, chatting with each other as if it were a Sunday ice cream social? I point the flashlight in the direction of the voices and see a group of four men standing around an automobile that has more colored neon light tubing on it than is legal or fashionable. I don’t know what they are talking about, but they are looking at me, grinning.
I don’t think much more about the situation because I am intent on getting my work done and getting back in bed so that I can try to sleep for a bit before the day begins. I close my hood, cast a glance at the guys standing around talking, and go back to my abode to lie down. That should be the end. There shouldn’t be any more to say and this shouldn’t even by typed out on a page so a reader can read it.
Oh how lovely that would be. How grand it would be that I never typed this. You see, those guys and their grins, those guys and their riced out compact neon mess of a car are only the beginning of a long ordeal and a longer quest in search of a parking spot.
What I didn’t know at the time was that they were not just standing around and chatting about the weather. They were busy. So busy, they had done their work late into the night and had forgotten the time. I admire that type of work ethic. I admire it when it is needed and not when it impedes my life to the point of committing murder. I had managed to bust in on their work trance only by the sheer luck that somebody as unlucky as me manages to have. They were taking a smoke break between working on the car’s transmission and working on the car’s fuel system. In the darkness, I had failed to notice the auto parts, boxes, tools, and garbage that was scattered around their break area.
The next day I did. I also figured out (all by myself) that they didn’t actually live in my apartment complex!
These guys had been driving down the street in their car and it had ceased to work. For some reason, the car had broken down right in front of my building and was going to need some major engine and transmission work before it could be resurrected anew. Knowing this, these gentlemen had hopped out of the vehicle and pushed it into my parking lot. They had gotten on their phones and had decided that the more people standing around “helping” the merrier they all would be. Now this might all be true, but it certainly didn’t help me.
It didn’t help me because once their friends came by to get in on the party; they brought their own cars to the gig as well! Now, in a lot that is designed to hold one car per each apartment, we now have six parking spaces taken up by the boys who are playing “Overhaulin” out there. And don’t think my neighbors haven’t noticed either. When somebody moves out of a parking space to go to school or a movie, several people (watching from their windows no doubt) come flying out of their homes and recreate a demolition derby trying to make it into that one vacant spot.
I know what you are thinking. You are thinking that they can’t be out there so long fixing on that car as to make a person mad for days. You are probably also thinking that at some point, some of those friends of theirs have to leave to go to jobs or homes or something. Yeah, I thought that too, and I am still rubbing my fuzzy chin over that.
They are out there in shifts. Twenty-four hours a day, they are out there. One group of friends will leave and another group of friends will turn up as if by clockwork… These shifts don’t have any set time limit nor do the guys have any schedule as to who will show up when or how many. Maybe they do, but I haven’t figured it out yet and I don’t have a shift of friends working on the scheduling problem. I probably don’t have that many friends anyways.
What is probably going on is they are using cell phones and calling people to come “hold their spot” because they have some errand to run like getting everybody else food at the local fast food shop or they have to go buy more motor oil to spill all over the blacktop. Whatever it is, it has caused me and my neighbors a ton of grief for the last week or so.
We decided to confront our new guests about the subject of when they will be leaving and why they think our parking lot is their playground. You should have seen us! Me firstly, the short white dude, leading because supposedly I look and act like a leader. Next, here comes my trusty band of cohorts. My next door neighbor, Alphat, who sheepishly crept along with me out to the auto shoppe taking place in our lot, muttering to himself in Farsi. And finally, Alphat’s son, whom doesn’t seem to have a name, striding like the punk teenager he is behind us.
We were friendly and polite. We were downright affable. For all of our overt tones of congeniality, we learned that “dey ain't goin no place til dee car get fixt.” So much for diplomacy. I also learned another bit of info that was of great importance to how things would be handled…or not handled. When the question of police involvement was raised, Alphat immediately became nervous.
Yep, you guessed it. Alphat is an illegal alien. So I guess that means we are going to have to endure the parking lot circus until the car gets fixed or I decide to call the police anyways and tell Alphat to go to hell. I guess it depends on how mad I get the next time I want a parking spot. Or, more likely, I will want to maintain the equilibrium of the complex and just park the car on the street. Subject my truck to the whims of the idiots who drive down my road like…well…idiots.
As for now, I have a good spot because I did like everybody else: I watched out the window and ran to the lot when a parking spot was free. I feel ashamed by it, but damn it, I’m not the dumbass with a car sticking out into oncoming traffic (for the moment). I wonder how long I can go without using the car?
