Days after watching WRAPS’s production of My Fair Lady, and I’m still humming and whistling those great Lerner and Loewe tunes and thinking about favourite scenes from the play.
If you haven’t seen it yet, I highly recommend going to one of the performances this weekend. Saturday night is the last one.
Endless tunes revolving in my head makes me think of something less pleasant that I did last Friday, involving the hospital parking garage in Kamloops where I spent the better part of the afternoon driving around in circles.
Literally.
For 90 minutes I drove in circles because there was nowhere to park there. I’d never been in there before, and now I’m more familiar with it than I’d like to be.
I drove a friend in for a test, getting there a half hour early. Didn’t make a difference. The only spot we found was Handicapped parking so we left it (and the driver behind us took it!)
After 30 minutes I let my passenger out to get to their appointment and continued driving. And driving. After 60 minutes it didn’t really matter anymore, because my passenger would be back at any time. I continued driving because there was nowhere to stop.
Other drivers stopped, in the most inconvenient places. Some of the drivers who joined me in the parade around the parkade got impatient after two or three passes and stormed out at their first chance, driving unsafely as many impatient drivers do.
The parking attendant finally waved me over after about 60 minutes to let me know there was other parking not far away, but I would have to plug coins into a meter.
At that point, finding a parking spot was sort of moot. Time was passing quickly. Indeed, only four or five more times around the parkade and my passenger would be back. Why stop now? Why take a spot that someone else might need more than I did?
Which made me wonder - just who did all of these cars belong to that they were still in the parkade after an hour and a half with no sign of leaving?
I’m glad I live in a small town!
Wendy Coomber is editor of the Ashcroft-Cache Creek Journal