Attention all deities

There's a special place in hell reserved for people who believe they have Rightful Parking Inheritance.

You know them well. I saw one today and resisted the urge to take my lovely, smart Jetta and jam one of my headlights into the driver's side door. I managed to reason myself out of that rather suicidal urge through two reasons:

  1. I could get lunch quickly if I just ran my errand and went back home; smashing into her car, being arrested and booked, and then having to have a nice long guilty chat with my insurance agent would likely delay lunch by several hours, thereby making me cranky

  2. Jeff would kill me.

Hunger pangs won the day. (They tend to do that.)

You know the type of driver I'm talking about: the oh-I'm-so-harried middle-aged female who drives an extraordinarily large SUV—alone—to Wal-Mart, and who drives slowly up and down each row of the parking lot. She is looking for The Perfect Parking Spot, and will not rest until she finds it.

I so desperately wanted to crunch my car into the Tah-Lex-Sport-Pedition monstrosity ahead of me. I had seen her when I pulled into the parking lot, and as I had turned in to circle closer to the building to find a parking spot.

She sat there, patiently waiting in the center of the row, blocking traffic from moving in that row—but of course it was okay, because she had Rightful Parking Inheritance, and she had her blinker on, indicating that she had found The Perfect Parking Spot and that she was prepared to wait until hell froze over to get it, too. Never mind that there was an open parking space six spaces back, and that she'd wasted more time waiting for the 'better' parking spot than the extra time it would have taken her to walk those few extra feet in.

I swerved around her, instructed my obedient Jetta not to crunch her car even though the other driver thoroughly deserved it, and swung into another (equally good) parking spot on the next row. I took my time getting out of the car; I arranged my keys, cell phone, wallet, and shopping list Just So, and made sure to give her the <austin powers>You Are A Fricking Moron™ </austin powers> stare as I walked past her car and into the store.

She was still there, blocking traffic, blinker on, as I went into the store.

I like to think that there's a special place in hell for people like this, people so lazy that they think that over five minutes' worth of sitting in one's car is worth the extra hundred feet they have to walk.

If you were on crutches—maybe, yeah, I could see that. Practically speaking, though, the likelihood of all asshole parking lot drivers being on crutches is just about nil. We're talking about sheer, unadulterated laziness.

I like to think that their hell is specially tailored for them.

They get to drive big, beautiful SUVs (for 'the children's safety') by themselves, and they're given an enormous grocery list and fifteen minutes to fill it. The parking space closest to the entrance is about to become free. There's a woman loading groceries into the trunk of the car, and she's almost finished…and once she's done, our Hell Inhabitant™ will score the ultimate parking place, and therefore complete her task on time, thereby escaping Hell.

Except that there's always one more bag to put in the trunk. Mysteriously, the trunk never fills, and the shopping cart never empties…and the Hell Inhabitant™ waits…and waits… and waits… and cannot compel herself to grab any of the other parking spots in the lot, because they aren't as good as this perfect spot…

…and there she sits, for all eternity, torn and miserable because she cannot get her groceries if she does not get the perfect parking spot, and if she does not get the perfect parking spot, she will never have time to get her groceries.

Attention all deities reading this post: I devise great punishments, and am available for hire at very cheap rates. You're all-knowing; you know how to reach me.

all tags: 
stupidity
rants
drivers
parking

Comments

On , Suli said...
I take guilty pleasure in the new commercials cursing Sport Hostility Vehicle owners as being whores to terrorists. Long before that, the parking princesses were at the top of my list too!

On , gfmorris said...
Oh, lots of folks do this in Huntsville ... the Status Uplift Vehicle owners are just the worst of the lot.

On , Inigo Montoya said...
*snicker snicker* I can completely understand this rant, because I've been on both sides of this issue. Growing up, my mom was one of those people who had to have The Perfect Spot. More accurately, she's still like that. For example, we go out shopping today. I'm driving, so I find a suitable parking space (I'm just usually happy finding one, I don't care where it is). My mom promptly begins to complain because she sees one that's closer. I ask her if it would really kill her to walk the extra 20-some-odd feet from there to the other parking space. She just sighed and kept her mouth shut. It's so much fun to do that on occasion.

On , Inigo Montoya said...
*Oh yeah, this is Kat posting that comment above*

On , Kevin said...
Hahaha. This entry made me laugh, Amy.

On , michael said...
if they're all knowing, they already know all your great punishments. got ya there...

On , domesticat said...
Well, of course they do, and they also know what's going to happen on next Tuesday after tea, and all those Dreadfully Important Things that deities are supposed to think about. It's kinda like how when you're walking down the street, you tend to keep your eyes on what you're walking toward. Technically you know you're walking, and if you thought about it real hard you could probably figure out the exact hows and whys of it all, but sometimes you just need....reminding. :)

On , Tialessa said...
Perhaps the deities would also consider going after those people who believe it's their right to park in front of the store, go in, do their business, then come back out - totally blocking traffic access one way in the process. The area in front of the store is NOT for parking (there's a silly thing referred to as a parking space for that purpose) & there are always signs in front of the store(s) stating this. (BTW I'm not referring to those people actually loading things into their car while parked in front of the store though that irks me too).