Rainy Days and Mondays

Remember that old song "Rainy Days and Mondays Always Get Me Down." Although it seemingly rains all the time in Pittsburgh, it was clear yesterday. If I was the least bit musical the song I would be singing would be "Ahole Drivers On Mondays Always Get Me Down".

Lesson One: Don't lend your car to your adult child
Lesson Two: If you missed Lesson One don't leave anything you need in the car when you lend it to an adult child.

I guess I missed school both of those days. I loaned my car to my daughter for a few days. When I got in it Monday morning, the parking pass for my garage at work was missing. I lay no blame, but vaporization during transitions is a known phenomena. No big deal I thought. I will just drive to the parking lot, take a ticket, park, go to the parking office and get a new pass. Unfortunately the best laid plans are corrupted by Murphy's Law. I actually saw footage of Murphy once. He was a military scientist who was the model for the crash test dummies. I saw video of this fool as a volunteer during rocket speed testing. As the rocket came to a stop, most of Murphy's body also came to a stop, but his retinas did not comply.

So as a I pulled into the garage I noticed a sign "Leases Only". Hey, I have a lease, I just don't have my pass. I pulled up to the ticket machine, pushed the button and no ticket came out. I looked into my rear view mirror and noticed an SUV behind me, with other cars behind him. The SUV driver was either singing to a very nasty rap song or he was directing a tirade of profanity at me. Fortunately I can not lip read and I could not hear him - yet.

I was blocked in. A gate was in front of me and the SUV was behind me. I tried motioning to the SUV driver to back up. For some reason this apparently made him angrier. So, instead I noticed a parking lot employee a few feet in front of me. I called to him and signaled. He ignored me. I pleaded with him to either open the gate so I could pull over or ask the cars behind me to back up. He continued to ignore me, but at least he smiled.

This left me with the only option, to get out of my car and ask the middle aged office worker rapper in the SUV to back up. This conversation did not go well. As he alternated profanity with addressing my heritage, my family, my sexuality, my reading ability and my intelligence, I wasn't getting far. Ultimately I think he realized at this point, if he was angry because I was delaying him, he was only making things worse. He backed up while continuing to swear and yell. Honestly, I reacted to him first trying to explain that I could read, but simply did not have my pass. When that didn't work I decided try to be bilingual and converse in his language. My topics were primarily comparing him to body parts that are generally covered by undergarments.

I was able to buy another pass in the office after my pal moved. I did suggest to the parking lot management that it would have been nice for their employee to take charge of the situation and direct the other drivers to back up. Their response is that they directed him not to do that because the last time he tried he caused an accident. I wonder if they ever thought that it might be a good idea to hire someone as a parking lot attendant who had the ability to direct traffic? As far as my friend the SUV driver, I wondered what could be so great or pressing in his office on a Monday morning that he was willing to blow his stack and get his week off to an angry and bad start.