It was a normal morning. The sun was shining. People were off to work while others were contemplating a return to bed. I was pulling into my local grocery store for a quick stop when I saw it – a sight as unique as it was breathtaking, a monument to self-actualization.
One car. Four spots.
A silver GMC was placed boldly right at the center of four parking spaces. I'm used to drivers taking up two parking spaces. That's routine; a little carelessness or a little selfishness can be the cause. Occasionally, you'll see a luxury car parked across three spots. But four? That's a rarity. That's the Halley's Comet of boorish parking. It takes a special kind of mindset to occupy four spaces with one vehicle. It's avaricious parking in the first degree – with intent. Gloriously brazen.
To be fair, there were plenty of empty spots available. It wasn't like the pickup's owner was depriving anyone. It wasn't an aggressive move. No one was being hurt. I couldn't even blame the person for doing it. The GMC's driver probably just thought, "Okay, time to carefully manoeuvre my large pickup into a single space – nope – wait a minute, I'll take four." He or she was just being human.
I suppose when self-driving cars solve all our problems, parking malfeasance will disappear. It would never occur to a robot to take four spots. That's for the best. Human drivers have shown a demonstrable propensity for claiming public spaces as private. The most common variety of parking hogs consists of those who drive luxury cars. They take two spots as a way to prevent the anonymous dents that appear when one uses public lots. How would you like to leave your brand new Audi TT Coupe at the mall only to return from Williams-Sonoma to find a scratch that wasn't there before? The two-space grab is their back-up plan until they can elect a government that will have anyone who drives an old beater barred from five-star shopping malls and stripped of the right to vote.
Some drivers lay claim to a particular patch of road. Where I live, street parking is at a premium, but there is a resident who has it figured out. He places two orange cones in front of his house. At first, I assumed those two orange cones were there because he was moving or having some construction done. Then, as the weeks passed, I realized he was using them to save his wife a spot. It was nothing personal. He just felt that his spouse's need to not walk any distance longer than 10 feet was more important than everyone else. So now, when there are no other spots available and I see those cones, I stop, get out of my car and place them on the sidewalk. Then I park. In this way, I turn his selfish act into a selfless one. He's not hogging a space, he's graciously saving a spot for his neighbour.
Is greedy parking evidence of a deeper set of flaws? It could be. Earlier this month, police in Brooklyn arrested Ernest Jacobs, a drug-dealer who had weapons, cash, cocaine and other drugs stashed in his apartment. According to the local news website DNAinfo, Jacobs' neighbours said the most notable thing about him was that he "frequently took orange traffic cones from a nearby construction site and used them to block off a parking spot for his white two-door BMW right in front of his house."
Beauty may only be skin deep, but bad parking goes a whole lot deeper.
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Andrew Clark