Parking Woes

Yesterday, after being here since the beginning of March, our car finally arrived! Naturally, since we know that our apartment has a parking space in our building's parking garage, the first thing we did when we brought it home for the first time yesterday was try to find our assigned spot.

We failed. There appear to be some kinks in the system because the front desk has no idea that we have a parking space. Undeterred, today I checked with the powers that be in the GSO office and determined that we are parking space #19.

"Excellent!" I thought, "Now I know where to park the car when I drive home!"

At this point, allow me to make a confession: I am the worst parker you will ever meet. Don't get me wrong, I never park outside the lines because it drives me crazy when people do that, but sometimes it will take me 5 tries to get within the lines. I don't know what it is. I'm a fine driver. In almost a decade of driving I've never gone careening into another car because I couldn't keep my vehicle in between the lines and I've never run off the road, but for the life of me I can't seem to get my car within those stupid white lines when I'm parking.

Okay, so back to our parking space. In the whole sad history of bad parking spaces (bad parking spaces having originated in ancient Roman times when gladiators would actually fight to the death for the chariot space right next to the arena where they were headed so they could fight to the death anyway) our parking space is the king of all bad parking spaces. Other bad parking spaces bow down and worship at the base of our parking space. That's how bad it is.

I'm not sure I've truly conveyed the awfulness of our parking space... if pigs could fly, they would forget to keep flying and fall out of the air in shock when they saw how bad our parking space is.

Perhaps a diagram would help:

• The shaded Green area is the outside of the garage.
  
• The shaded Grey area is inside the garage.
  
• The Black circles are pillars inside the garage.
  
• The Black arrow is pointing to our parking space.
  
• The Blue bar is the garage door.
  
• The darker Blue smudge is our car.
  
• And the jagged Red and Yellow lines between our car and our parking space? That's the fissure that opens into hell.

To avoid making an already long story even longer, I got the car into the space without taking off any paint or maiming any small children.

At this point you might be asking yourself, "So what's the point?" Here it is: I've discovered a mental condition!

Agoraphobia

An abnormal fear of open or public places.

Arachnophobia

An abnormal fear of spiders.

Autorelocophobia

An abnormal fear of relocating your car because you dread having to put it back into its parking space.

Fortunately, I have also discovered a cure for this new disease! No one is allowed to move our car from its parking place. Ever.

Okay, maybe the flying pigs.

-Dave