My personal parking lot philosophy is to just quickly grab a spot, even if it means I have to walk a bit further. Other people…. have a different philosophy.

So I’m on the second floor of the Barnes & Noble this afternoon, having a snack and coffee, overlooking the parking lot of the strip mall. It’s crowded. The lot is full, and so the savages are fighting each other for good parking spaces as they open up. All the usual behavior is exhibited: stalking pedestrians, honking, cutting off other cars with their blinkers on, etc. It’s pretty entertaining when you can view it from up high in relative tranquility.

It so happens that I spot a particular blue SUV, the frame dirty all around at the tire-line, with a lady driver. She is circling around the first two aisles only, refusing to venture out any further. She had to be doing this for five minutes by the time I glance down at the time on my iPhone.

Two spaces open up in the third aisle. But she’s having none of it. Apparently she insists on nabbing a spot in the first two aisles! Okay, game on. Five more minutes of this go by, as I’m now timing her. If someone was with me, we could have picked over-unders.

As she circles back again towards the second aisle, there are still spots open in the third isle. But now the second aisle is backed up – there are five cars in line, as the car in front of the line is waiting for some slow pedestrians to get into their car and pull out. No way this lady will pull up into this line, right? Surely she’ll go to third aisle, and find the spots there, and walk the extra 12 feet. Right?

Nope. She pulls right into the long line in the second aisle, and waits there another three minutes for the line to start moving. Then back to the first aisle again.

It’s now been a full 15 minutes. We’re back to aisle two now, and there are pedestrians heading towards a car! Does she slow down and stalk them, like any other just-mildly-insane person would do? Hell NO! She angrily ZOOMS PAST THEM! The idiots were in her way! Back to aisle one! Meanwhile, a car that was behind her happily stops and puts its blinker on, and gets the spot.

20 minutes of this now. Back to aisle two, and there’s a line again. This time there is room ahead of the last car in line. So she floors it, swerves, and PASSES the last car in line and cuts him off to sit in line in front of him. The line is stalled for a couple more minutes. Justice is severed however - as she pulls back into aisle one, the car she had cut off finds a spot opening up, and he winds up getting it.

On and on this goes. Another group of pedestrians is summarily ignored and zipped past.

At the 28 minute mark, she exits aisle one, and crosses back over the main entry way, to the lot on the other side of the strip mall, out of my view. Goodbye, blue SUV lady. I admit to being disappointed to not see how the saga ended. I decided to check out a few things on my phone before I left, after having been distracted now for almost a half-hour. I can’t help but keep an eye out for her, just on the chance she comes back. But that couldn’t happen. Right?

Right…?

Seven minutes later – a full SEVEN minutes later – dirty blue SUV is BACK! Back AGAIN! Tell a friend! Back down aisle one, and then on two aisle two. This is now 35 minutes from when I first spotted her.

And the fun is NOT over! Two minutes into the sequel, a spot opens in aisle two, and she is in the lead to get it. She heads right for it. At last… at long last, she will get what she wanted. Maybe it was all worth it.

But wait.

Wait.

She drives past it.

She DRIVES PAST IT.

What. The. FUCK??????

Aisle two is not good enough for blue SUV lady! Back we go to aisle one!!!!!

And wouldn’t you know it, a spot is open, and she takes it. I was waiting for a back-in to top it all off, but I didn’t get it. She gets out of the car, with her two grade-school aged kids, and heads into the book store.

Thirty-seven minutes. Think about that. Thirty-seven minutes. I thought for sure when she got out of the car, someone would be in a wheel chair, or she’d have a baby in a stroller, or something that might help explain it. But no, she just hopped out of the car, kids behind her, and ambled on into the book store. Maybe she was going to buy 80 pounds of books and couldn’t carry them beyond aisle one. I didn’t stick around to find out.

I did, however, pass her on my way out! I might have said something, if only I was a clever enough man to come up with the perfect line right there. Then I notice, she now only has one kid with her. Where the other kid went, I do not know.

In the rest of my lifetime, I will never grasp the mentality that results in this kind of decision making.

Sini-24-guy

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No. I rambled too much.

She probably puts in 20 minutes a day on the treadmill too.
Never understood why anyone would do this kind of thing at a mall and then walk for miles in the mall from store to store.
But they do it.

I usually park near the back of parking lots myself. I don't care about near spots where idiots leave their shopping carts because they're too damn lazy to take them to the corrals and the wind blows them into doors and shit fuck that.

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"Play until it hurts, then play until it hurts to not play."
http://soundcloud.com/darkside124 HOF 2013, MM Champion 2014

The most amazing part of the story to me is that there was a Barnes and Noble still open.

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And it's usually crowded, too. But it's on borrowed time, no doubt. I spent $25 to get the Halperin book about the 2012 election and some Starbucks, so, I contributed my fair share.

Yeah I never understood it either. makes absolutely no sense at all.

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"He is a loathsome, offensive brute
--yet I can't look away."

pussy dries up when you stuff it with common sense

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the world will always the world. your entire existence is defined by your response.

She should have backed into the space.

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-- source

This, plus the sparse car and foot traffic in the back of the lots makes exiting much quicker.

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"I honestly don't see a good bet on the board here."