Parking Karma

So I’m incredibly lucky at parking. I nearly always good free parking. If not, when I park illegally, I don’t get caught. That’s not to say I never get parking tickets, because certainly I have, but they are infrequent. And with one exception, I would challenge all the parking tickets I’ve received as being the product a malicious or overly efficious parking officer: twice, I’ve been given a ticket in a situation where 1/2 my car was legal, the other half not legal (actually, 1/2 my car in the permit-only part, 1/2 in the non-permit parking (I have a permit) in the West End). Also, across the street from the office is a store with 1-hour free parking. There’s been a couple of days where I’ve parked there all day, and sometimes even at metres all day.
Today, when I came back from lunch, Marian and I switched cars (she had been at a metre, I’d been in the spot out back), and I parked at a metre (not paying, of course). About 1 hour later, I went to the store to grab chocolate for folks, and checked on my car. There was a parking attendent approaching, so I moved my car. As I pulled out, a car pulled out from up ahead of me – in the free parking zone on 1st, so I’m now parked there. Woo-hoo!

To balance out my karma, my car has been subjected to what seems an inordinate amount of punishment: 2 scrapes (one over the back wheel by a white car, one in the front by a blue car) as well as having had my driver’s side mirror kicked off. Which is no fun. But at least I get good parking spots (which is doubly amazing because, as Leah will attest, I am an awful parker. Most of the time. Sometimes I manage to squeeze our car into tiny little spots. In fact, I think sometimes that the bigger the parallel parking spot I find, the more trouble I have with it.

So that’s my completely inconsequential story for the day.