Day 74: Park with Plastic?

I’ve men­tioned this before, but I almost never carry cash. On the rare occa­sion that I do have cash on my per­son some­thing always comes up that I need to spend the cash and then I’m once again in the same posi­tion of not hav­ing cash.

Today I didn’t have cash. And the one thing a per­son in a city really needs cash for is park­ing. And I did a lot of park­ing today. You can see where I’m going with this, right?

Actu­ally, as The Son and I dashed out the door to pick up The Daugh­ter and her class­mates before dash­ing off to get The Son to prac­tice, he remem­ber to ask if I had cash. No, I’d for­got­ten to raid the quar­ter dish on the dresser. So I unlocked the door and ran back into the house to grab a hand­ful of quarters.

We picked up the girls and one of The Son’s team­mates who also needed a ride, dropped the girls at a friend’s house (their prac­tice started later in the day and they’d get a ride from another mom), and then dashed to prac­tice. I fed the machine my quar­ters and for the sum of $2.00 got a receipt that granted me two hour’s worth of park­ing in space #55.

Two hours later, The Son’s team was done but The Daughter’s team had another hour to go so I went back to the machine and fed it another 4 quar­ters. In return for my $1.00, I was granted another hour’s worth of park­ing in space #55.

The Daughter’s prac­tice was sup­posed to be over at 6:15 but nat­u­rally didn’t let out until 6:30. I hus­tled the kids (just my two at this point, every­one else had a ride home) out to the car and made a bee-line for home. Of course, a bee-line in this metrop­o­lis at 6:30pm is not a very fast bee-line. There was still tons of rush-hour traf­fic slow­ing things down.

We made it home by 7:10. I dashed into the house for a quick bath­room visit, then flew back out grab­bing my purse and blow­ing a kiss to The Hus­band and plead­ing with him to look up the address of my des­ti­na­tion on-line and call me on my cell phone to give me direc­tions. My des­ti­na­tion was a large local book­store where author John Elder Robi­son was giv­ing a read­ing from his book, “Look Me In The Eye.” The read­ing was sched­uled to start at 7:30. Yeah, right, like there was any way I was going to make it on time.

The Hus­band took his sweet time but finally called just as I was approach­ing down­town. His direc­tions were off but I found the store with­out too much trou­ble only to real­ize that — oh, yeah, hello, just where had I thought I’d park and just how did I think I was going to pay for it? This is down­town! Peo­ple every­where going out to din­ner, hit­ting the clubs, hit­ting the bars, doing what­ever peo­ple do down­town in the evening — I really have no clue as I’m just a sub­ur­ban wife and mother with no life of my own any­more .

I had two dimes in my pocket and I might have been able to dig another few pen­nies or other small change out of my purse.

I drove around scop­ing out the lots — $5.00 per night here, $8.00 after 4pm there, 1-hour meters along the streets; I don’t even know who much they cost because there wasn’t any empty spot for blocks. I drove around in a 3-block cir­cle and on my sec­ond pass by the store I’d just about given up hope of get­ting myself out of this stu­pid, unpre­pared­ness mess when I noticed a lit­tle Visa logo on the park­ing lot sign. What? Am I dream­ing? Can it be true? Will my plas­tic save my skin and I’ll get to go to the read­ing after all? It was way too good to be true. But it was. I parked, hunted down the kiosk, and after two false starts, fig­ured out how to charge $5.00 to my credit card for unlim­ited park­ing between 4pm tonight and 6am tomor­row. Risk­ing an asthma attack, I dashed for the book­store and made it to the read­ing just as Mr. Robi­son was being introduced.

So, Park­ing — $8.00, was the sum total of my expenses today and I learned a valu­able les­son. Never loose faith in the power of plas­tic

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