Tales From Exit 22 by Al Batt

I’d successfully avoided hitting most of the feral fenderbergs dotting the parking lot.

A fenderberg is frozen slush that hitchhikes in the wheel wells of an automobile and is often dislodged from parked autos.

I parked. Then I backed up and parked again so that my car would be centered between the lines.

My school’s driver’s training instructor, Harry Lillesve, taught a 15-year-old me to park between the lines. That was one of the few things about that course I grasped immediately.

One winter day, I’d parked in a supermarket parking lot on a winter day filled with cold and snow. The lines in that snow-covered lot were difficult to impossible to see. There were two lines of vehicles in the lot that had parked properly based upon the location of the shopping cart return. Snow-covered parking lots are a challenge. The first car parks where its driver estimated a stall existed. Future parkers base their parking on that first car. One off, all off. When I came out of the store a few hours later after doing a bit for a charitable organization, eating and shopping, I discovered a third row of cars had parked behind my row and locked in what was now the middle row of parked cars. It was anarchy. Others and I couldn’t leave the parking lot. At least not with our vehicles.

I grabbed an escaped cart and put it where it belonged before I retreated to the supermarket and waited in a booth in the dining area while sipping a cup of tea and watching out the window. When a few cars of the third row of parking scofflaws left, which they had no problem doing, I ran outside, got into my car and snaked my way past other parked cars to freedom. It took work — backing up, going forward, turning and twisting, but it gave meaning to my escape.

I wasn’t freed for long before I’d encountered a pickup parked in front of a fire hydrant in a space reserved for people who don’t know any better. Maybe he needed a prescription windshield or had lost the steering wheel. The driver was probably in a hurry and wanted to park twice as fast in half the time as he normally did. Or he just didn’t give a rip where he parked. Park like that and you’d better have a note from your doctor. I’ll bet he didn’t get any gold stars in parking class.

There are parking perils, as I learned when I lived in a big city and had parked on the odd side when I should have parked on the even side of the street. Or maybe I parked on the even side when I should have parked on the odd side of the street. I’m not sure. I wasn’t there. I’d engaged a babysitter for my car while I was out of town, but my vetting process of the carsitter should have been more robust. It snowed and the streets needed to be cleaned. My car had violated a sacred parking rule by being on the wrong side of the alternate-side parking universe. It was ticketed and towed to a place that must have been several states away as the ticket and towing costs exceeded not only the value of my car, but the combined value of the next four cars I’d own.

My wife uses the self-checkout at some stores. I think she is shooting for the employee-of-the-month award and its coveted prime parking position.

I talked to a meter maid years ago. She told me tales that were both funny and frightening. Drivers dislike parking meters and consider it to be all’s fair in love, war and parking meters. I’ll admit to feeling joy when I park at a meter that shows substantial time remaining. I was born under the sign “Free Parking.”

I needed to spend time in the company of medical professionals and my car needed to spend large blocks of time in parking ramps. Do vehicles straddle lines to avoid door dings or do they do so because a vehicle next to them, now gone, had parked poorly?

The more-the-merrier theory is wrong and misery doesn’t love company. Not in a parking ramp anyway.

No one is a perfect parker, but when everyone has self-driving cars that park themselves, bad parking won’t be our fault.

Until then, I’ll ponder on how many rows must a man walk down before he’ll admit he can’t remember where he parked his car?

Al Batt’s columns appear every Wednesday and Saturday.