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Great Writing - Home > Non-Fiction > Parking mad.
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Non-Fiction
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| Parking mad. | |
| By FirstTimeMum | ||||||||||||||||||
| 03 December 2007 | ||||||||||||||||||
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This is my second effort. Still feeling my feet here but don't hold back if there are things you want to say! Fate intervened three times this morning to place me in a position in which I behaved badly. I decided on my way from the supermarket that, rather than continue on my way home where a nice cup of tea was awaiting me, it would be a good idea to head for the centre of town. My illogical reasoning will sound absurd. The library is closing for re-carpeting on Wednesday, and I wanted to return some books and pick up a book that I had requested called ’Mums@home’ that I have been waiting for since the Summer. In my mind I thought it would be good to have a new selection of books to see me through the weeks leading up to Christmas, and the icing on the cake was ‘Mums@home’ which was going to show me the way to make a go of home-working. So, fate intervened and the decision was made to go into town. The second time fate intervened was as I was circling the ring-road deciding where to park. Now I am thrifty at the best of times, but in my current financial situation on-street parking several miles from my destination is par for the course. I was all set to head to my favourite spot, pull on my coat, and push the buggy through the wind and rain but… I had a ‘L’Oreal moment’. I decided I would treat myself to a parent and child parking space undercover in the multi-storey because ‘I’m worth it’. Up the ramp I drove giddy with excitement at the prospect of this guilty pleasure – a parent and child parking space with plenty of room to get the buggy out, near to the lift, indoors where it most definitely was not raining! I turned left down the parent and child ‘aisle’ without indicating, and mentally chastised myself for my poor driving. I continued forwards and quickly realised that as I had blinked I had missed the parent and child spaces – all five of them – and now I was headed straight for the ‘normal’ spaces and was being drawn towards the exit and the spaces that were outside in the elements. The rain was swirling as I took my second run up and indicated left for the parent and child ‘aisle’. There they were, all five of them, lovely big spaces with lovely big people carriers and four wheel drives parked within them. I gazed longingly over my shoulder as I approached the end of the row for the second time, and out of the corner of my eye I saw an elderly couple approaching pushing a child in a push chair. I immediately put two and two together and realised that the return of this family unit to their vehicle could spell something wonderful for me (relatively speaking). I circled back again, and noted the woman, who by this time I had decided was the grandmother, taking the young child out of the push-chair… and I was outside again, windscreen wipers swishing, rain swirling. On my fourth drive by I felt I knew this family intimately, as they continued folding the push-chair and strapping the child into the car. I felt sure that on one of these drive-bys my persistence would be rewarded, and they would pull out enabling me to park in their newly vacated space. As it happened the reverse lights on Grandma and Grandad’s car popped on just as I was indicating left to enter the parent and child ‘aisle’ on the eighth or ninth occasion, and I faltered there in the hinterland between the ‘normal’ spaces and the parent and child ones, half in, half out – much to the annoyance of the car behind me. They reversed then set off on their way, and I pulled forward ready to propel myself forward with ease into the delicious space that awaited me. I hadn’t seen the reverse lights on the red Ford Galaxy in front of me until it was, well, in front of me at a very peculiar angle. It seemed I had a rival for the space. The passenger door of the rival car opened, and one very spritely young mum popped out and hot-footed it into the middle of ‘my’ space. She stood flapping her hands in her dark wool coat, all petite and perfectly made-up, glowing with assumed ownership of the coveted parking place. As it was, nobody was going anywhere. I couldn’t pull forward without hitting the Galaxy, and it couldn’t reverse without hitting me. The woman moved towards me and mouthed “Its ours”. I quickly realised I had not followed parking etiquette by passing this space in circular motion eight or nine times. What I should have done was stop, indicate, and wait. It might also have helped if I had a passenger to step out and guard the space while I made my way into it, but alas it was just me and my twelve month old daughter, and the damage was already done. It was at this point that fate intervened for the third time. I could have reversed, conceding defeat and allowing Mr Galaxy to sally forth into his space, but I didn’t. Something inside me snapped, and fuelled by twenty years of being on the receiving end of parking gazumping I spun the steering wheel harshly and undertook the Galaxy in dramatic fashion, squeezing through the narrow gap between the petite woman and the car in the way that only a very angry person in a very old and clapped-out car can. I arrived in the space and just as I was settling in the woman approached my window. I lowered it to hear her ask what I thought I was doing. “Parking” I stated baldly. “But we were waiting!” she protested. “I was waiting too” I replied, wishing I could prove it. What is waiting anyway? Just because I was on the move, I was still waiting. At this point her partner appeared at the window, and they both began to shout. I suddenly realised what I had got myself into, and regretted my behaviour (but not to the point that I was about to apologise or vacate my space). As they remonstrated I shrugged and said, “That’s Life” and closed my window hastily, fearing that this could get nasty. The man returned to the Galaxy, and the woman called me something rather unsavoury and suggested that my daughter must be really proud to have me as a Mum. I nodded sagely. Although I wasn’t perhaps setting quite the best example at that moment in time, I did think she felt proud as she sat in her carseat behind me watching me fearlessly dealing with this screaming woman in such a calm, controlled manner (although I was kicking myself that I hadn’t done my make-up a bit more carefully that morning). The woman retreated, and I tentatively stepped out to survey my space. All seemed well. The Galaxy’s tail-lights disappeared around the corner, and I hastily got my daughter into her buggy reflecting on the fact that parking rage was alive and well, that becoming a parent had made me strangely competitive, that people can be very strange (myself included), and that I had a very strong desire to tell this story over and over again to anyone I could in order that they might say something to absolve me of the horrible guilt I felt about behaving in such a ridiculously childish way! Postscript. ‘Mums@home’ turned out to be a cheesy novel about people like me doing crazy things like this, rather than the informative guide to home-working I had hoped it would be.
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