This Was Not the Blog Post I Planned to Write

I had other things to write about.

I had just gone to see The End of Oak Street—vlog review coming soon—and then stopped at Boxcar Betty’s in MTP, where I discovered bacon jam.

I did not know I needed bacon jam in my life. Now I’m wondering how I survived this long without it. Was I even living, or was I merely existing in a tragically bacon-jam-free state?

After lunch, I wanted to go to the nearest Starbucks, sit down, and get some writing done before a recovery meeting. I had topics. I had thoughts. I may have even had a plan.

None of those topics involved the back of a Honda CR-V.

And yet, here we are.

This particular Starbucks is next to a National Tire & Battery. Because it is next to a tire shop, there are sometimes vehicles parked outside the service bays. It happens. Cars need tires. Tires need cars. The circle of automotive life continues.

The resulting passageway is narrow, but it works—as long as everybody participates in that increasingly experimental social practice known as courtesy.

Usually, drivers go around the vehicles near the service bays and move as far left as possible without sacrificing a wheel rim to the curb. It is not a perfect system, but civilization has survived on less.

Not this vehicle.

This vehicle appeared committed to occupying exactly enough of the available space to make passing somewhere between “deeply uncomfortable” and “please have your insurance information ready.”

There wasn’t much room between the building, the sidewalk, and the car. So I waited.

And waited.

At least ten minutes.

I did not honk. Remember, no horn. Read back if you don’t know that story.

I did consider flashing my high beams, but that seemed like the automotive equivalent of sending a strongly worded email while the recipient is sitting directly in front of you.

Eventually, the car moved forward.

Victory?

Not exactly.

It moved just enough to acknowledge that movement was technically possible, while still declining to leave what experts call “a reasonable amount of space.”

As I finally worked my way around, the people inside appeared to be waiting for the early-bird special to begin while conducting important business on a portable device. Perhaps they were negotiating a treaty. Perhaps they were solving the national debt. Perhaps they were watching a video explaining how driveways work.

I may never know.

Here is the semi-serious part: parking lots are small communities with bad signage. We all have somewhere to be. We are all distracted. We are all occasionally the person who doesn’t realize we are blocking someone else.

But when you are sitting in a narrow lane, and another car has been waiting behind you long enough to reconsider every decision that led them there, moving over a few feet is a lovely gesture.

It costs nothing. It requires no app. There is no subscription fee.

Just look around, notice the other humans, and share the pavement.

Anyway, I eventually made it to Starbucks. I had bacon jam in my recent past, a recovery meeting in my near future, and several completely different topics waiting to be written.

Instead, I wrote about this car.

Ugh.