Monday, January 4, 2010

Parking Lots

Growing up, my family drove a 1976 Volvo station wagon which we affectionately called "Helga". Helga had about 30,000,000 miles on her and you could feel things hit your feet as we drove because the floor was rusted out. Just about every part on the car had been replaced at some point, except for the odometer which broke after 17 years.  But who needs an odometer?  We didn't need to know when 5000 miles had passed since the last service because Helga went to the garage once a week for some random problem.

Now, being that Helga was a special car, she had to have a special parking spot.  If we went to a shopping mall, my father would park the car in the last spot in the lot.  This is the spot no one wants because it is so far from the store entrance.  You almost need to catch a taxi to get there. If we were in a small parking lot, then my father would never park our straight in a parking space.  He would always park diagonally and take up two spaces.  This way no one would put a ding in the side of the car.  Did I mention that the car was completely rusted out?  Did I mention that it had a billion miles on it?  At least we didn't have any dings in the doors.

So, I felt a little nostalgia when last week I came across this parking job:


I am searching for an explanation but not finding any.  Maybe there was no other place to park? No.  Maybe he had a nice shiny new car? No. Maybe the lines were faded? No.

Well, it looks like he doesn't have any dings in his doors either.

2 comments:

  1. You know for some reason you always forget to think about the obvious and most annoying 2 reasons:
    1. Laziness
    2. Lack of care (one of the best Israeli feature)

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  2. Seriously, I remember a "US-Israel Cultural Differences" course I attended while with Intel, long time ago.

    One of the Israelis cultural features that the lecturer pointed out, was the imposibility to relate to drawn borders of any kind ...The unawarness from parking spot division lines was the obvious example.

    Another one, note how Ma'atz would release for use a new or repaved road lond days before they complete the painting of the division lines. Who cares, anyway?...:-)

    Avi

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