Creating Community in the Vons Parking Lot

Why there is suddenly a handful of people who think I’m insane.

It is my one day off, and I’ve made peace with my bloated schedule. I was going to write something completely different from what I’m writing this week. It was going to be inspirational—a missive to save the world, but now I have no business speaking on anything ever. I don’t even have business writing about this—according to Mary Karr—who via The Art of Memoir, insists I might want to wait seven to eight years before annotating my trauma for the consumption of readers.

Anyway it’s a good day—better than most before it happens.

I hike, I garden, I pet my cat, don’t go on Instagram, eat four eggs like a wild wolf, and finish Four Thousand Weeks. It will be the perfect day off once I drink my latte and write my newsletter. I pull into the parking lot and maneuver my car to pull through to the adjacent spot, so that I am facing out. Over the last year, I’ve become the kind of person who backs into her space, a real bold baddie, extending this polite gesture to the future version of myself who must pull the car out of the spot. Pulling-through is backing-in’s naughty kinda lazy cousin, and here’s the problem with it.

Sometimes you don’t see what’s right there in front of you.

This time, when I think I’m being clever, I get a jarring surprise as my car lurches all the way up and over a curb of an diamond-shaped island of dirt. I hear the crunch of my undercarriage landing on the concrete block, which seems to attract the attention of everyone in the parking lot

The terrified ladies are far away and in no danger of being run over by me, but tell that to them and see if they listen.

There is a family of women in modest skirts that stand in a line four parking rows away from me. There are no cars obscuring their view of the incident, so they are a focused and attentive audience. They freeze like I’m pointing a gun at them, or like they’re pointing guns at me, it’s a reverse-firing squad sensation where no one is sure who is looking down the barrel.

My adrenaline has kicked in and I fumble my exit by attempting to just continue driving through. Of course, this is a bad idea and my car protests by screaming along the concrete making noise without forward progress.

I realize that if she had the power to forward me into this, she must have the power to back me out, so I switch into reverse while I slam on the gas pedal without checking the rearview.

Listen, I wasn’t going to back into the aisle. I just wanted to get my front tire onto the other side of the parking block, but the guy behind me gets real dramatic and honks right as my front bumper slams back down onto the proper side of the stubborn and inane block. This honk means that everyone who hadn’t noticed before is now aware that me and my car are stupid, and the four ladies are still frozen as though the whole thing is happening to them. I swear they all have the look that actors get before they whimper, “Please don’t hurt me. I have a husband/child/father/cat.”

I realize I must leave the parking lot entirely, forget the latte, try not to make eye-contact with the people who have paused the loading of their groceries. A man stands at his hatchback with a cartful, never betraying eye-contact, perhaps planning the steps he may have to take to subdue the madwoman who tried to ram through the dirt island. I consider this might have to be the moment where I completely withdraw from society.

I guess I could explain it to all of them. Step out of my car and calmly shout, “OOPS, haha! That parking block snuck up on me!” Wave at the man who looks ready to sedate me and assure him that I’m not crazy.

But instead I rush to the page. More than ever, it feels like the safest place to be—where I can explain all the misunderstandings, point you to an essay where I was the sane one and someone else was crazy. Do I have any of those? Well, you know what I mean. Thanks for reading.

Here is something I drew about life.

Please let me know about the time you ran over a parking block, so we can feel less alone together.