Day 74: Park with Plastic?

Posted on | November 15, 2007 |

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