Do you remember that scene in Austin Powers (the first, none of the over the top ones past the sequel) where Austin somehow gets the golf cart stuck in the hallway? He reverses then drives, trying to angle out, but we see that he is perfectly perpendicular to the wall. He's stuck for good, but the length of time we watch him try is just so darn hilarious.
Hilarious in the Austinian universe, but pretty nerve wrecking when you get to the real-life sequence of you trying to find parking in Atlanta. It's hard. It's hard to find parking in Atlanta! And it combines two of my worst fears: driving and heavily populated areas.
My original plan was to park in my favorite $3 parking lot, but lo' the universe hates me. It was full, and so were the next two lots. Until, I decided to just screw it and drove straight into this smallish lot with angled spots (easier to park into) and a credit card machine (I didn't have cash on me to pay). Turns out all those pluses were little teases, because the lot was damn small and the rows didn't lead into a circle but dead-ends. I got trapped when trying to get out of the SMALLEST LOT IN THE WORLD, Austin-style.
Mentally, I was blank. Physically, I was at ten and two, gripping the steering wheel with my claws, and praying that some miracle would happen, like a car moving or a nice homeless man coming over to direct me.*
Alas, it was not to be. I was Austin Powers stuck in a tiny parking lot and my class was in thirty minutes.
No, my brain said. You can do this! My brain said.
Inch by inch I drove forward, and inch by inch I drove back. I continued to do this, until—HURRAH! I’m free! I whizzed out of that place rather quickly, past an SUV with a sporty looking driver who was definitely going to get stuck.
Should I tell them the perils that await them?
No, my brain said. It is their burden to discover.
*I see the homeless do this all the time in Downtown. Whenever some helpless driver is trying to parallel park, a homeless man, who could just be walking down the sidewalk, stops what he’s doing and starts directing the driver, no questions asked. Sometimes people are ever-so grateful. Other times, people ignore them. Either way, these homeless people get a thank you for helping, one that’s usually in the form of green