Parking

Have you ever noticed in parking lots, especially very large ones in suburban malls, what drivers will do to try and get as close as possible to the entrance of the main building?

I saw one such driver today at our local strip mall.

This mall has the usual agglomeration of tenant stores. The largest are a drugstore and a supermarket, both being branches of prosperous nationwide chains. Alongside are an optician, a snackbar, a shop that sells specialty beauty products, a couple of apparel shops, a restaurant, a dry-cleaning establishment, and a shoe-repair shop.

The mall was busy today. The economy is humming along well. People are out spending money. The parking lot was maybe half-full, with many vacant spaces at its outer edges, oh, some hundred yards away from the entrances to the shops.

But there was this one car with a female driver, who could easily have parked in one of the more distant spaces, who was patiently (or perhaps not patiently) waiting for another car to vacate a space that was closer to the store entrances.

The waiting car, a late-model Sports Utility Vehicle of Swedish manufacture, waited for what seemed a very long time, because the driver of the other car, also female, was elderly, and she was having a great deal of trouble backing out of her space.

The lady in the waiting car, whose turn signal was flashing steadily to discourage possible interlopers who might at the last minute slip into her chosen spot, made no attempt to give the exiting car any more room to maneuver by backing up. No, she was going to stay put, never mind that the lady in the other car kept motioning to her to back off.

Actually, there was ample room for the second lady to get out of her space and drive away, but you know how elderly people are sometimes—they need plenty of room, especially if they are shorter and can hardly peer over the top of the steering wheel.

Her car was an older model Buick, quite large for such a small person, but it was immaculately maintained and very shiny still. She certainly was not going to risk any damage to its pristine chrome fenders and paintwork. She motioned again to the lady in the waiting car. She sounded her horn once or twice. The other lady did not budge.

It was, as they say, a Mexican standoff.

In the end, the elderly lady in the Buick inched forward back into her parking spot, shut off her engine, and got out of her car. She gave the SUV driver a glowering look, and then ambled over to the cafeteria for a cup of coffee.

The lady in the waiting car, having been soundly trumped, drove off with a squeal of her tires to find another parking space farther off.