Parking

When I was in college (oh, you KNOW I wanted write 'at university' but it sounds so proper and English and well, that's just not me, so...) yeah, when I was in college at the delightful Bloomington campus of Indiana University, one of the biggest challenges was parking.

I was a 'dormie.' Although, we were seriously trained not to call our the buildings in which we lived 'dorms.' They are residence halls, you see. You sleep in a dorm. But you LIVE in a residence hall.

And one of the most harrowing parts of a residence hall is finding parking. There are levels of parking, for which you have to purchase permits. As you got further and further along in your education, you were able to purchase better permits.

The problem with snagging a prime parking spot was that once one parked their vehicle there, they didn't want to move it because they'd lose their spot.

This always confused me, to be honest. Wasn't the whole point of getting a good parking spot so that it would be convenient for you to go somewhere at a later date?

Yeah, but...then you'd have to come back and someone, probably someone you didn't like much AT ALL would most assuredly have come along and parked in YOUR spot.

So those friends, the ones with the great parking spots, could often be found bumming rides to the mall, or the stadium, or wherever, from their friends with the less desirable parking spots because...see above about losing their prime parking space.

I know. Makes no sense.

And now that I'm all grown up and have a garage in which I'm allowed to park from November to late March, I laugh at all the college drama over parking spaces.

Each stage in life has its stressors. Each moment has the good and the bad parts. I'd like to hope that as I sprint my way into my 40s, I'm learning to filter out the bad and bask in the good.

I'm trying, I'll give myself that much.