Parking Lot Lament

Another oldie but goodie.

Parking lots are high on my irritation list lately. Maybe you’ve noticed it too… that parking spaces have shrunk. I am convinced that somewhere out there a computer is designing parking lots using industry standard software with the default space size set to MINI Cooper instead of Chevy Trailblazer. If you’ve tried to park anywhere lately you know what I mean.

Not long ago I arrived at a shopping center to pick up a pizza and managed to barely squeeze my not so mini-van into a parking space. The good news was I could still get out of my van. The bad news was that while I was in the pizza shop the cars originally parked next to mine left, and drivers with even larger cars pulled into the adjacent spaces. Hot pizza in hand I discovered that getting back in the driver’s door of my van would force me to risk the deductible on my auto insurance policy.

Fortunately, I have years of experience as a mini-van driver so I did what any red blooded, American soccer mom would do. I opened the van’s rear sliding door, found my way through the piles of spare socks, cleats, library books and toys, and then climbed over the console table to the front seat. This was a “win-win” situation as it allowed me to spare damage to any car AND get my pizza box in without turning it sideways.

On the way home I puzzled over how difficult it is to find a “real” parking space anymore. You know the parking space I’m talking about, the one large enough for a ’74 Lincoln Continental to open all four doors, all at the same time, and still fit within the white lines on both sides. The optimist in my head suggested that “perhaps the people who own the shopping center were thinking long term… If they made parking spaces smaller they would influence the car buying public to think small and bring about world peace by lessening our dependence on fossil fuels.” The pessimist in my head foamed at the mouth in reply, “the people who own the shopping center were thinking short term... Smaller spaces mean more spaces. More spaces mean more cars. And MORE CARS MEAN MORE MONEY!” Call me cynical; the pessimist won me over.

In a perfect world we’d all love a good sized parking space with MINI Coopers parked on each side of us. And if those MINI Cooper drivers are still shopping when we leave our parking spaces then it really is a perfect world. “Perhaps in an even more perfect world we would all drive MINI Coopers” the optimist in my head mused. But “hello” I replied, “the van is paid for and I’m keeping it until I find the mates to all those spare socks”.

In the real world the quest to find a parking space that suits my social conscience is a challenge, but that’s my burden. The shopping center owner has a different focus entirely. He doesn’t care about my car as long as my money ends up in his hands. And let’s face it - Americans need to shop for some things, but we WANT to shop for everything else. As long as the shopping center owner has parking spaces we will fill them.

But here is where it gets interesting. Americans also need to eat, in fact, we LOVE to eat. And our waistlines are growing.

In a few more years, if those parking spaces aren’t any wider one of two things will have to change: either cars will need to have center aisles with doors where they now have trunks, or we’ll all be stuck in the parking lot waiting for a MINI Cooper to park next to us so we can get in or out of our cars.

The mental picture of row upon row of shoppers stuck in their SUV’s, reading their library books (or perhaps matching those spare socks), hoping for a fleet of MINI Coopers to come to their rescue caused the pessimist in my head to belly laugh. I laughed too. Then I parked the van in the garage, grabbed the pizza box and headed upstairs to feed the starving masses, ever thankful for my sliding door.

Janice Arrowood
Parking Lot Lament©2007