So I was going to college today and I had no choice but to commute. Now this wouldn't normally be a problem, but being a college in the middle of a well-off town like Pleasant Hill, everybody has a car that they can park with. And yes, that's the name of the actual city. Pleasant Hill just sounds like an obnoxious place, doesn't it? The name just reeks of 'morning children show' despite the town having a slightly worn look. Pleasant Hill looks like the poor part of a rich county, which means at its worst it probably still manages to look like Beverly Hills to the folks in East Oakland. But I digress, that wasn't what I was going to discuss. What I was going to discuss, is parking.
Parking is the arch-nemesis of any college student on the clock, because a parking space just manages to elude you the most when you're running at your latest. It's always the huge parking lots, too. Ironically enough, the college campus I previous attended had a really small parking lot, yet amidst some troubles I could always manage to find a place to park. The big ones where you're telling yourself "Well shit, I don't even see this many people on the campus" are the parking lots to worry about. Seriously, I could count more cars than people I see around that school. What do students do? Have their legs through both sunroofs on the cars and drive them to school like they're on waterskis? And you would just wander for hours, even days looking for a parking space, much like a man would wander a desert looking for an oasis.
What if I had to find parking somewhere else? Then I would have to park at somebody's house nearby, and I wouldn't have money to pay for it. Instead I would have to perform sexual favors like sucking dick to keep my parking space. And while I'm not saying I wouldn't suck dick in a desperate situation, I'd just prefer to arrange something like that ahead of time. Get some papers processed so you could sue him for anything that goes wrong. You never know what would be coming out of that dick. STDs and AIDS or some disgusting shit. Not literally shit, though. I've seen some weird things come out of dicks before, but I haven't seen that yet. I think I'm getting off on a tangent. In both senses of the meaning, but I digress.
I left at 8:45am. I got there around 9:20 or so; ten minutes to find a parking spot and get to class. I did not find one until 11:30am. TWO HOURS HAD PASSED. TWO. FUCKING. HOURS. I MISSED MY FIRST CLASS BECAUSE I WAS TOO BUSY LOOKING FOR A PLACE TO PARK. I HAD TO LEAVE AND GO GET GAS JUST SO I COULD COME BACK AND SEARCH SOME MORE. ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? Every parking lot in a three to four mile radius was full. I would know; I scoured them all, just desperate for a spot that seemed to perpetually elude me. Of course that wasn't the worst of it. Oh no, I forgot about the people.
Now, if you want to truly know... how much of a terrible, conniving, ruthless human being somebody can be, then go to a college parking lot on the first week of class. There's always been something about the automobile that functions as a catalyst for somebody's malice, but a parking lot is a great place to witness the process. There you can learn just how capable a person is of being evil. And there's no other word for it. I can understand survival of the fittest and the need to get to class, but there were some evil people in that parking lot. I don't have an extensive vocabulary, but "evil" is the only word I can use to articulate the kinds of people in that place who were desperate enough to find a parking spot that they'd go against traffic in the main street just to backtrack and check if any parking lanes have opened up in the area they just searched for the umpteenth time three minutes ago. Students parked in faculty spaces. Students parked in red zones. Students who were lacking clearance parked in handicapped spaces. I counted no less than twelve cars with their hazard lights on; I thought to myself "Well shit, there must be a virus going around that's killing cars." But as soon as somebody in front of them pulled out, those hazards were off and they were on that space faster than a drunk whore on her date's crotch at prom night. They were sleazy predators parked in the middle of the lane, just waiting for their prey to show up.
You could almost imagine what everybody is is going through. Roaming the lanes. Emotionally dead. You pass a driver and you can see the absence of hope in their eyes as you drove by. You looked the same. But then... somebody was walking away from the school. OH LORDY YES, COULD THEY BE WALKING TOWARDS THEIR CAR TO LEAVE? You and everybody else slow down as much as possible as to not pass that person, meaning you lose the opportunity to get their spot if you do. But... you're not the person who gets it. Somebody else closer does. You can feel the air shift from emotionally numb to impeccable excitement... to scathing anger. And that person pulling into the spot feels overjoyed that he got a spot. And here's a test to see if that person is still human; if he or she breaks down while leaving the car from the amount of hateful venom the spiteful drivers are eying them with, then congratulations; you've succeeded at breaking their spirit. If they leave the car, whistling and skipping to class despite being late, then I recommend calling the local authorities because you just saw a person more evil than Hitler, and has probably cut off drivers and ran over pedestrians to win that spot. And with that bombardment of emotions, your hope is crushed and you're back to searching while questioning why higher education might not be important enough to sacrifice your faith in people.
When I managed to finally find a spot, my joy was crushed. Apparently I've failed to neglect that I need to pay for parking. 40 bucks for a semester pass, or 3 dollars a day otherwise. This was a tragedy. How could I forget such a critical oversight? Although in retrospect, it doesn't make a damn lick of sense. Just because I can afford the gas doesn't mean I can afford parking. Hell, if I had money to throw around for trivial bullshit like that, then I wouldn't be going to a community college in the first place. It became terrifying, though. What if I couldn't pay for it that day? What would happen? Would my car get towed? Ticketed? I didn't care. At that point, I just went "Fuck it, I missed my first class already. I need to get to the next one." Although I learned that there's a gracing period for the first week of class, so no trouble there at least.
After showing up late, going to the yard, failing to hit on somebody, and waiting in line to spend 165 dollars I don't have on books at the store, I finally decided to return to my car and go home. ......If I could find it. In my exhaustion and emotionally dead mood that just wanted to get to class, I completely neglected to remember where I parked. Well, it's not as if I could; it all looked the same. No landmarks. No lamps. No trees. I managed to park in a massive lot next to school that was packed with cars. The scenery was every-changing with color. It was impossible to remember who I was parked next to, or anything else of the sort. I wandered for a while on the phone to have my idiot friend in Jersey to remind me how much of an idiot I was while I searched and told him this story I just told you.
The moral of the story? Remember to leave your empathy at home. You won't be needing that for where you're going. Shit like that will only get in the way.
And show up an hour early. You'll need it.
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