Parking Spaces and Other Things I Now Take Personally
When did I go from dreaming about sports cars to dreaming about a parking space near the door?
Middle age isn't about graying hair or creaky knees, although you'll undoubtedly discover that. I learned it's about finding out your true nemesis, which is lousy parking etiquette.
In my 20s, I parked wherever, didn't care if it was far, and never once thought about shade. I considered a meandering nature hike from wherever I had parked to the front door of where I intended to go to be a good and healthy thing. Now, a shaded spot with easy access to the door feels like winning the lottery. The worth of a parking space is measured in distance, convenience, and whether or not the next car over is parked like a fool.
We all eventually end up in the scenario we prefer to avoid, which is the parking lot standoff. It's a push-pull sort of event that is usually more stress than payoff.
Eye contact is everything, like any other conflict in civilized society. If you lock eyes with someone else, you've just entered a silent battle for dominance, much like dealing with any wild animal or walking down the street in New York City.
You can't help but bring up defensive maneuvers when you're head-to-head with a stranger. If someone turns on their blinker, you must decide at that moment if you will be the hero or the villain.
Have you ever seen someone block two lanes waiting for a spot? That's middle-aged audacity in action. It's the spark for an event of Geritol aggression. And yes, before you ask, GenXers, Geritol is still alive and well. Your momma was on it, and you can be, too.
When someone sneaks into the space you've been waiting for, it's not just a slight. It's a personal attack begging for you to address, a betrayal of decency that will gnaw at you until victory is yours. It's meaningless, really, but you don't give a solitary hoot at the moment, nor should you. Finding and securing that perfect spot comes with a rush of dopamine that no fancy dessert or Black Friday deal can replicate.
A moment of sanity might peek through as you resolve the great debate in your mind. Do I park a little farther away to avoid dings on the car door, or do I risk it for the sake of convenience?
A solid truth remains: You can tell a lot about a person by how they handle parking. It's the Southern equivalent of a personality test.
As far as generational differences go, teenagers don't care. Seniors have no shame. And middle-aged folks like us are stuck in the middle. We're desperate for efficiency but still trying to look cool. We don't. We never do.
That's not the point.
No matter what you do, you will still end up in the classic maelstrom of parking lot politics. It will magically appear before your eyes because there's always that one car that parks diagonally across two spaces. That driver's probably the same person who puts sugar in cornbread.
The other option is when that person has a behemoth of a vehicle that serves no purpose other than being a service vehicle. I don't mean that like a vehicle used in the service of a function, like a tow truck or a mechanical vehicle; I mean in the same way one would have a service dog for emotional or psychological support.
You know exactly the ones I mean, the tires are large enough to float a family down a river, and the truck's body is jacked up so high that you could drive an import sedan underneath it. They come with ladders for grown men to clamber aboard like a mob of hobbits trying to get on the back of a horse.
I knew a fellow like this once. I was working with the railroad and was part of the same work detail. He stood just over five feet tall, one of the few grown men I'd met who was shorter than me. The other was H. Ross Perot. This guy might have been even shorter.
He didn't have Mr. Perot's command presence.
Bob, as we'll call him, had a handsome beast of a truck, painted a shade of construction orange off of the popular Caterpillar Yellow, and being assigned to take a ride with him to our appointed work location, I began the Ninja Warrior task of getting into the damned thing.
Once you were adequately loaded into the massive machine of highway destruction, you just wanted to run over the other Matchbox cars on the road merely on principle.
He was a good fella, don't get me wrong. Bob was kind, had a very effective work ethic, and was chatty as well, which I like in general. As expected, he had been hassled in childhood and even into adulthood for his height, which was an accepted sore spot he'd learned to just laugh about.
While we were on the way to the site, I looked at the rear window to see a decal of a couple of six-shooters and a phrase in Old English letters that I couldn't decipher backward.
"What does it say on the window?" I asked. He looked at me and gave me a devilish grin.
"Read it when you get out," he instructed.
After my freefall down to safety that almost required a parachute, I got a good look at the window and laughed. In shiny metallic lettering so that it couldn't be missed, it read:
DAMN RIGHT, I'M COMPENSATING!
If you see this, "Bob," it's been a long time since Atoka, Oklahoma. I hope you're well.
Maybe this obsession isn't about laziness or efficiency but about claiming tiny victories where we can. Middle age teaches you that life is short, but parking far away makes it feel a lot longer.
Because at the end of the day, a good parking space isn't just a convenience. It's a badge of honor.
