My wife has become a player in the neighborhood pastime of Parking Grab. Even better, she’s merged the game with elements of Survivor as far as building alliances.
By way of background, I live on a residential street notable for the primal need of some residents to take up multiple on-street parking spots, whether they require them or not.
No matter that they have garages that have gone years without hosting a car. No matter that they have driveways and/or pulloff areas that get light use.
They measure their self-esteem by dominating on-street parking, particularly in front of their house or the houses of others close by. A few weeks back my wife returned from shopping and, lacking a spot to park in front of our house, parked in front of a neighbor’s house.
This brought a swift verbal rebuke from the neighbor’s wife. My wife now has joined my son in getting grief from these people for the unforgivable sin of parking on a public street. So far they haven’t had the temerity to yell at me, which probably is a good thing.
I called the local gendarmes on the matter and the officer assured me we had as much right to park on this public street as any other drivers do, as long as we were not blocking a driveway or other such things. We were not.
These neighbors are not the only offenders. We have others on our block who have joined the party.
There also seems to be a particularly ardent contest underway on the next block, with one proponent upping the ante by getting a handicapped parking sign installed. The handicapped parking tag seems to be passed around from vehicle to vehicle and, as an added bonus, the users are playing the Parking Grab variation of controlling extra spots with careful positioning of each vehicle.
To do this, the “handicapped” vehicle uses the handicapped parking sign as a bisecting point and parks with the front of the vehicle ahead of the sign and close enough to the next driveway up the street that only something like a 106-inch total length Smart Car — less than the wheelbase of my Kia Sorento — might park between the vehicle and the driveway.
Their aggrieved neighbors from across the street – we’ve heard past calls on the police scanner – retaliated with a handicapped parking tag of their own in the family vehicle and camped on the spot for a time, positioning the SUV to grab the extra half-space up front.
But she must have had to go somewhere, so now one of the many “handicapped” vehicles of that area has replaced her, leaving the half space open in front and having a confederate parked half a space or so distant in the rear. This way they control 2 1/2 to 3 spots.
How ingenious of them.
There is a similar tactic being employed in front of my house by several neighbors and their visitors or paramours, parking between a driveway and another parked car with about half a car length in front and in back.
As my wife prepared to leave today for grocery shopping, I told her to expect to have the parking spots taken by the time she got back.
But I found out later that the wife had a plan. She enlisted a neighbor to put a vehicle in the taking-multiple-spots position to await the return of my wife.
Meanwhile, I took one of my Mustangs out for a cruise – blissfully it is parked in a nearby rented garage and parking grabbers haven’t been brazen enough to force the lock and park in the garage when I’m out.
When I got back, I was bemused to see the SUV taking up multiple spaces, but didn’t realize it all had been preplanned.
I mowed our grass and shortly thereafter my wife pulled up and the neighbor placeholder moved the car to make room for my wife to park – with her notably leaving a space for someone else, too. This happened just as a visitor to a neighbor swooped in hoping to grab the whole multi-car spot – needing it due to lacking the ability to parallel park.
We unloaded the car and I laughed out loud when my wife filled me in on her pre-planning. I congratulated her for joining the fray and adding to it with alliance building.
I eagerly await any response from the neighbors, who just hate it when others play their silly game better than they do.
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