The Challenges of Moving: Parking

Ever since I moved significantly closer to NYC, I have run into a few…challenges.Today's challenge is parking...rather finding a place to park on the street so my car does not get towed away. When I was waist deep in the search for an apartment, an assigned or guaranteed parking space was part of the optional criteria. I thought of myself pretty smart because rentals tended to be cheaper if they did not have assigned parking.If I had a time machine, I would go back to when I started looking for apartments; find my past self, kick him square in the testicles, and tell him to get off his high horse named "Frugality" and find an apartment with guaranteed parking. Granted said scrotum smashing would probably result in a gaping hole where all of time and space would uncontrollably swirl into it. You know, like the toilet flushing (black hole) scenes in the 2009 Star Trek movie.Anyway, finding a valid parking space tonight was bordering on murderous. Seriously. Driving around the same six blocks for over a half hour affects one's psyche. There was this one driver who parked his white Toyota Avalon so poorly that the car took up the area of an eighteen-wheeler's trailer. Passing this awfully positioned sedan was so frustrating that if I passed it again, I would have acted upon my rage. Thankfully, God had pity on the mind-numbed driver named "Greg".Right before I passed that atrocity again, its lights flashed twice. A breath escaped my lungs. "Is that car unlocked now?" I ponder franticly. Not taking any chances on the answer, I stopped and backed up in front of the adjacent fire hydrant. I waited and waited. As if I were a crocodile and the Avalon was a zebra, I turned off my lights and slunk into my seat to avoid detection.Then suddenly two men and a woman walk out of an apartment and into the car. But still, I wait. For all I know, they may want to have a belated celebration of yesterday's holiday. The tail lights shine; followed closely by the reverse lights. I can feel my heart beating faster; my breath quickening. As they vacate the space, I turn my head lights on, shift into first gear, and spring into the long awaited asphalt void.Relieved, I get out of my car, lock the doors, arm the alarm, and walk away satisfied. In my head I was walking in slow-motion to Tomoyasu Hotei's "Battle Without Honor or Humanity." A little dramatic but totally appropriate for the tedious ordeal I have just been through.Now all I need to do is move my car four times a week, for the rest of the time I live in my new apartment. These are the times I curse the auto industry for being lazy and not developing electric cars sooner.