Parking karma

While taking a break eating olive oil popcorn in the back room of my library I entertained myself by watching people parking in our "Carpool and Vanpool Parking Only" spots. This is an entertainment that never fails to astonish and fascinate me. Though usually it's too emotional for me after about 15 minutes and I have to turn away. But today something extraordinary happened. A van pulled up and a person climbed out of the driver side door just like normal, but then other people started getting out of the van. There were at least five people in that van!

I had been watching these carpool/vanpool parking places for about ten minutes and, as usual, I had seen maybe five or six vans and cars, pulling up or leaving, and everyone of those vehicles carried but one person. Who even knew that a van could carry as many as five people? I mean, besides the visionaries who created the "Carpool and Vanpool Parking Only" spots.  Those people must have the kind of imagination the rest of us can only dream of possessing!

Years of watching lone people park in the "Carpool and Vanpool Parking Only" spots has given me a kind of revenge over the years. At first it was all a bit upsetting, seeing people violate with seeming impunity something so sensible, but slowly I noticed our carpool parkers were growing more and more crippled over time. These regular library patrons, parking scofflaws, had so devoted themselves to avoiding physical activity that they began to fall apart. They can now hardly walk into the library even from the cozy proximity of the "Carpool and Vanpool Parking Only" spots. Pretty soon they'll be legally eligible for our disabled parking spots, opening up our carpool spots to a new group of self-punishing criminals.

I see some of these vanpool parking people in the library, after they've transmuted into library patrons. They seem more troubled than evil. I even help them.

They say revenge is sweet. I don't know.