So Right It’s Wrong
I’m running late. I am in fact driving late on my way to the SCG from the northern suburbs of Sydney on a Thursday night. The Swans are playing St Kilda. Even with every imaginable toll, even if it was within my power to bend the laws of the road and/or the laws of physics, I’ll be doing well to get to the city proper before the first bounce. When I ask for last-minute parking tips from my pals already inside the stadium, the actual advice that I receive is ‘Good luck,’ and ‘Yikes,’ and ‘Here’s my advice: Don’t drive.’
There is no stress quite like anticipatory parking stress. I’m buzzing with it, eaten by it, on the halting, infuriating drive through the guts of the city. In between cursing Sydney’s tourist attractions for personally ruining my life (‘What kind of idiot would build a bridge at this angle?’) I try to calculate the radius of what is an acceptable park for the Sydney Cricket Ground. If you get in at lunch time for an evening game, you can park across the road no worries. If you’re an hour out and have a good head on your shoulders, the best place to park would be a distant bus stop. If you’re arriving a few minutes before the starting siren, anywhere within five postcodes where you can legally leave your vehicle for two hours (not easy) will do. If you, like me, are this late, you’d be willing to pay just about whatever it costs to park in a Wilson Security garage on the moon.
Albion Street is a steep hill. I’m climbing up towards its crest on my way to Crown Street, very possibly already in an acceptable parking radius of the ground, rapidly looking at both sides of the one-way street for a place to call home. No dice. I whip into the right turning bay and come to a true stop for the first time this side of the harbour. The parking stress hits me like a truck. I hear the hooter go in my brain, I see Buddy at the 50 lining up some niche landmark—150th Thursday night goal against a team with black on their jersey, he’s always doing things like that. My heel taps so hard that the whole car shudders. Come on. The right arrow is red for longer than seems legal or necessary, but I can’t see any of the intersection because of the angle of the hill and the two cars in front of me. Finally the lights change. I inch forward but nothing happens. Pedestrians, probably. Typical! Don’t they know I have somewhere to be? The cars in front don’t move an inch, actually they don't even seem to think about moving. I want to honk—I’ve been honked for less—but before I’ve summoned the courage the light is red again. Shit. Come on come on come on.
By rapidly, manically looking in all three of my mirrors I get the sense that Albion Street’s uphill flow is relentless, so I’m stuck here turning right—and where else would I even go anyway? The light goes green again and I inch again and have to properly jolt to a stop, smacking my palm on the top of the wheel, ‘Come on!’ I yell at the totally immobile vehicles in front of me, at the completely moronically stationary cars. I’m about to honk when the guy who’d only moments ago pulled into the turning bay behind me, a big black Tesla (it’s always a Tesla) rips out and around us, zooms up the crest of the hill, and takes the right turn onto Crown Street on a yellow light from the middle lane. Yikes. One of the most dangerous and entitled things I’ve ever seen a car do and yet from where I’m sitting it doesn’t look like such a bad idea.
By this point I’m totally apoplectic, praying to any deity I can remember the name of just to get me a spot before the third quarter starts. ‘Dear, sweet Hela, Sun God Ra, Mother Gaia, Zeusy-baby, Thoth you miserable bastard, please oh please let me find a nice juicy park on a Surry Hills side alley.’ I look frantically at the signage on both sides of the street for some janky 2P spot I can reverse into, and find that the No Stopping sign immediately to my right has tiny text at the bottom that reads, ‘Authorised Medical Vehicles excepted.’
In what I believe to be very clear scientific evidence of the effect of parking stress on the human brain, my first thought after reading this was, ‘God I wish I was an Authorised Medical Vehicle.’ My second thought was something unprintable about Tesla drivers. Third, I simply wondered why the worst things always happen to the best people? I’d like to say I cottoned on with my fourth thought, but I don’t actually think any of the first ten were getting warm. In fact, it was only after a third light cycle without any kind of movement that I realised that the car in front of me had no driver. And, on closer inspection, its brake lights were just a reflection of my headlights. Curious. Foot tapping began anew, palm slapping on the wheel, cogs turning in the mind. Something was going on here, I knew it.
Though obviously pressed for time, when I finally clued in to the fact that I was lining up to turn right behind two completely empty and parked cars, I let out a long and complicated sigh. Like air hissing out of a hot air balloon after a long day in the sky. And though the park I eventually found in a one-way Surry Hills laneway was a good one given the circs, and though I was in my seat not long after the start of the second quarter, I haven’t been able to turn right without some degree of Authorised Medical Vehicle paranoia ever since.
Do these things happen to other people?
The Curious Case of the Big Green Button
NB: This is a re-share from an egg from earlier in the year, just in case you missed it. Felt like it was on the same general theme of me being a moron. Enjoy.
Once all the staff have gone home for the day, to get the automatic doors at my gym to open you have to push a big green button that says ‘Push firmly to exit,’ which, not to brag, I have done successfully plenty of times, and I know that it’s perfectly operational tonight because I just watched one sweaty half of a recently finished Spin class button-push their way through the doors, which closed only seconds before I got there, no worries, that’s just the way it goes sometimes, I step up confidently and press the button firmly, arrogantly really, but nothing happens, and still nothing happens when I push it again, and so obviously I push it twenty times as fast as I can because I can hear (and smell) the second half of the Spin class approaching from behind, and since these quick taps aren’t working I move to longer, more desperate, increasingly firm and continuous thumps of the green button but the doors don’t move at all and I just start to think that I’m maybe going to die here and the Spin class is now all standing beside me, breathing loudly still, staring dumbly at the frozen door, talking about the ‘really great pump today,’ and how their asses will be ‘soooo sore tomorrow,’ and a few of them look over at me impatiently, and honestly I’ve pushed this button so firmly and so many times that the entire left hemisphere of my body is trembling, and I’m sweating from my temples, and pushing this button is now both physically and pyschospiritually more difficult than anything I did in the last hour in the gym, and the Spin class has grown restless and have spun themselves into a collective tiff and they murmur (loudly) to each other about how they never have any trouble with the big green button when they push it firmly and then someone calls out from the middle of their smug and sweaty pack, ‘Hey, kid,’ and I’m 25 by the way and he says, ‘You have to push the button,’ as if I am not currently right in front of his eyes obviously actively pushing the button and my chest gets suddenly tight and I turn in disbelief and say, ‘I. Know.’ in time with my pushing to which he says, ‘You have to push it firmly,’ and the Spin class murmurs its assent and I want to say, ‘Look, mate, I have never pushed a button firmer than this in my entire life,’ but instead I sigh loudly and loadedly—which I will soon regret—and proceed to overdramatically—regretfully—wind up like a softball pitcher in slow motion, and this extremely regrettable theatrics must take enough time for the door’s computer system to breathe for the first time since I started whacking it a minute ago, and reset itself, and start working again, because when I make my big over the top show of firmly pushing the absolute living shit out of this green button with the force of my entire body, all while maintaining eye contact with the Spin class at large, lo and behold, the door slides open.
Do these things happen to other people?
I think some of the parking horror is genetic , from the MacDonald side of the family. How the police laughed when I reported that my car had been stolen from a clearway in North Sydney
I’m sure these things happen to other people. But not as frequently as they happen to you 🤣🤣
And not as funny as when they happen to you 😵