Sunday in the Parking Lot with Gorge (Rising)

Among the many things I hate--the Tea Party, country music, Brussels sprouts--parking vultures figure right up there.  These are folks who hover around a car when the owner (or thief) has just gotten in and then wait for the car to leave so that they can swoop into the space.  While I sympathize with the desire to grab a choice parking spot, I resent the disruptions caused to the flow of traffic, of which I am inevitably a part.

The worst parking vultures scavenge in parking garages: While waiting for a space, they completely block anyone behind them.  At my doctor's office, there is one such parking garage, and I have literally been made late for appointments--for which I would otherwise have been on time--because someone was waiting for a parking space, rather than just continuing up the ramp to find another spot just slightly farther away from the entrance.  It takes great will-power to resist the urge to get out of my car, walk up to the vulture, and cough up a lungful of whatever has brought me TO the doctor into his inconsiderate face.

It has honestly never occurred to me to blame the person occupying the parking space.  Apparently, that was short-sighted.  According to an article in today's Times, cases of "parking rage" are on the rise in parking-scarce areas, as vultures find themselves forced to wait for parking spaces when, instead of pulling out immediately, drivers sit in parked cars to make phone calls, check or send e-mail, or update Facebook statuses.  As much as I hate to agree with the vultures, I understand their frustration.

Those occupying the parking spaces respond that they are actually doing the responsible thing: conducting conversations while safely parked rather than endangering others by texting while driving.  Since only a churl would point out that their communications are probably not THAT important, I will say that they make a sound argument--and then point out that their communications are probably not THAT important.  I would also point out that, rather than make the vultures think they are about to leave their parking spots, these parkers could actually conduct their cell-phone enabled communiques before they get into their cars.  After all, that's what Starbucks is for.