The Big Book of Worries - Parking
You could say parking here where I live in Princeton, New Jersey is rigorously regulated, you could say it’s also totally retarded, and is somewhat different from the attitudes I grew used to in the eight years I spent living in Paris. A city where I first came across the phrase anarchic parking, and not without good reason. Here in Princeton with their little, golf buggy style parking “enforcers” the traffic officers here spend a good portion of their otherwise free time enforcing the regulations. Where do you start? 10 feet from a fire hydrant, 25 feet from a crosswalk, 50 feet from a stop sign? I even got a ticket once for parking facing the wrong way. Little did I know this was illegal. Then finally of course there is my favourite, your wheels must neither touch the curb nor be more than 6 inches from the curb. Let’s not dwell on the fact that I am completely metric and I wouldn’t have any idea how far 6 inches was, but for it not being exactly half our 30cm rulers.
It’s a worry waiting to happen isn’t it? After all who wants a $60 parking fine? Only yesterday I reversed into a space. And here I have to admit, parking spaces everywhere you look here are vast open spaces, where back in Europe I would have expected at least a normal car and a SMART car to fit snugly together. When I was done reversing, I got out to find, I was still a good 20cm from the curb. And as everyone knows, once you are in a space, the only way you can get any closer is to really come all the way out and try again, and I didn’t fancy that. So with my no worries head firmly attached, a lobbed a few quarters into the metre, and skipped off to run my errands.
Frankly, it was some while before I started to think about those 20cms. I had heard stories of people getting ticketed for such a crime, so I knew it could happen, so I was concerned. I tried not to rush my cappuccino forte as I took a break, even though I could see in my head the parking enforcer pulling alongside and measuring up! By the time I left, I decided to take that short detour past the car on my way to the second hand record store. I’ll be honest this isn’t a heart palpitation level worry, but I was relieved to see no white paper flapping under the wiper as I passed by. I more or less forgot about the whole thing while I was in the record store, I’m really not that bad at worrying I told myself, and when I returned to drive home a little later, I was happy to see that I had happily dodged another small disaster on life’s road.
