Ducklings

Meg Simmons was running late. And the truth was that there was really no good reason for it – no late night celebrating this or that, no screaming baby waking the dead at the witching hour, not even a short bout with prolonged consciousness at some unknown juncture during the long night – it was nothing but a case of old-fashioned can’t-seem-to-crawl-outa-these-sheets laziness.

   And the gal had a spin class to lead at 7 a.m. – imagine that, a sluggish and occasionally lazy fitness instructor!

   Still, once she was present and suitably loosened up, please stand back and watch the girl go!

   One cup of coffee while she primped, another sucked down en route, and by 6:57 she’d managed to screech her way into the parking lot only to be met there with the unexpected sight of a brood of ducklings loitering across the most conveniently-located parking space. A quick toot of the horn, a polite warning, and yet the oblivious creatures hardly seemed to notice and barely moved. Mother duck was right there staring back at the rude interloper and with a coolish fluttering hopped up onto the curb and finally began to lead those ducklings safely away.

   But there were a couple of stragglers, be them defiant or only dumb it matters not, and an irked Meg leaned on that horn a little more purposely and then slowly inched forward in her vehicle. The little guys just stood there hugging the right side of the space so that Meg eventually found herself parking upon that left white-painted line, but no worries – there were plenty of other spaces available for all other arriving vehicles to park. The rest of the lot was still empty, at least for now.

   6:58 – she slammed it into park and fled inside.

By the time April Fleming turned into the parking lot Meg had already disappeared. But there sat Meg’s green Forrester, for some odd reason parked slightly askew to the left and for all intents and purposes taking up two coveted parking spaces. Now how the hell could anybody pull in right there next to that Forrester and then expect Meg to clamber back inside without first depositing a righteous ding as delivered by her affronting car? Typical selfish entitled bullshit from good old Meg, April thought.

   But she let it go and parked smack dead center in her own chosen space. Because that’s good karma, bitches!

And so on it went with other gym enthusiasts coming and going all morning long, and it should be noted that parking at this new facility was at a premium, especially nearby parking on cool windy days such as this one, and so what unfolded was somewhat of a domino effect, all future parking being affected by that original and obviously self-interested wrongdoer. Everybody was blaming everybody else who in turn was actually wronged by someone else altogether. And if you thought that you were the victim then how you parked (because you had to, what other choice did you really have?) couldn’t help but victimize the very next guy or gal who thought you must be some kind of egocentric idiot. Oh the looks that were exchanged in that parking lot! By 10:37 when Meg sauntered back out into the blustery day she saw that she would need to suck it in and shimmy sideways into the driver side door, and she wasn’t happy, not one bit, because by now she was physically spent and emotionally drained (dealing with a handful of smartass slackers like April Fleming will do that to you). But suck it in and shimmy she did because there was nothing else she could do and she even took what she considered excessive care not to push her door into the black paint job of the vehicle squeezed in next to her (and btw, she did notice that the driver of this black Hummer, no friend of hers she assumed, had plenty of room to get out on his or her own driver’s side), and she landed in a heap with a sigh and it didn’t bother her too much that despite all efforts when she did so her left knee accidentally pushed her door in an outwardly direction where it came to rest firmly stuck into that offending shiny black symbol of mindless excess.

   Oh well, she had tried to play nice.

   Meg had already backed out and been absorbed into our paved tributarial world when the next vehicle in queue whipped around the corner already ogling for the coveted just-vacated spot. Could I really be that lucky thought Oliver Johnson, fiftyish local real estate guy with the shiny red Jag (you MUST play the part of successful dealer in this town), and he was royally pissed to see that black Hummer spilling over into his space!

   The nerve of that fucker!

   It hadn’t been a good day. It hadn’t been a good week. The month was almost over and he’d only sold one ratty little two bedroom dump on the other side of the tracks. He really wasn’t in the mood for this. With all that said, with all that felt deeply in his gut all the way down to his manly gonads, it wasn’t that difficult a decision to allow his own precious car door to swing wide permitting that pointed red corner to make contact with virgin black paint.

   Ding!

   Dong!

   Dang!

   Screw it!

   Fate only exists in retrospect and the rational man can’t blame God either. But the fact of the matter is that Billy Ray Thompson had completed his Wednesday mid-morning routine (consisting of thirty minutes on the treadmill plus a complete upper body weight-lifting regimen) and had just emerged from those swinging doors in perfect time to witness the just-described transgression perpetrated on his brand new Hummer. 

   Barbed words shouted loudly as launched by bursting adrenaline and pumped-up hormones escalated into two grown men circling one another only a couple of feet apart. One of them puffed out their chest, the other tried to push it back in, and what ensued was an unfortunate episode highlighted by Thompson whirling around and kicking the door of the little red sports car followed by an extremely short round of pathetic old-white-guy put-up-your-dukes fisticuffs exquisitely topped off with an even shorter round of some really weird wrestling.

   The result: two grown men left panting on the pavement as the amused crowd slowly began to disperse.

   Well lookee over there, here come those baby ducklings again. They are so cuddling cute, so doggone sweet, absolutely oblivious to the machinations of our foolish world, but one thing they are not my fellow car-parking brethren is innocent.

~ ~ ~

(and now, for your listening pleasure, something not entirely different but actually in the same vein... Emperor of the Highway)