There are limited spaces at the supermarket that cater for parents with prams, and at our local supermarket it is often packed. I have come to rely on these spots not because they are close to the front door, but because my fellow pram wielding parents seem to be part of the minority who are capable of parking in a straight line. Granted we all have a common goal, to get in and out of baby seats and manage our strollers as best as possible on top of shopping and the cars around us. But, it seems to me that this works out for everyone and the five spaces available are usually the only ones occupied yet straight and evenly spaced.
In case you got this far and are wondering, no, I don’t have a small life that should require a short bus, I’m getting to the crux of my point slowly but surely.
So, long story short, they are an important few spaces of car park, wherever you are. Bringing me to my point. My boen to pick is this. If you don’t have a pram, stroller, car seat, child, or even know someone in any country who has a child, what the fuck are you doing in my spot?
If you are one of the people that do this, I discourage you to read on as this will not bode well for you.
You have the ENTIRE CAR PARK to park your dirty banged up rubbish car, throw your cigarettes on the ground and swear loudly and proudly like you belong in government housing commission for all the wrong reasons.. Is it so hard for you to walk the few extra meters and ruin someone else’s shopping experience, are you that lazy?
This comes about because last week I was gearing up to do the shopping, we got there, parked up the back because it was packed with school holidays tag alongs , no problem. I strap Lily in her carrier and off we go. i get half way down the parking area and a woman packing up her car in one of these spots catches my eye. She is looking at me with a disgusted face on.. ok.. then the looking turned to staring, intensional or not. When I walked past her, I couldn’t hold back.
“Glad you have a pram there..” I say with sarcasm and a repulsed expression of my own, she didn’t know who she was trading facials with obviously.. She will not win.
“What?” she says, clueless to what I am saying.
“Do you have a kid with you? A pram? A stroller? Since you in a parents with prams spot?” Then I paused and stopped walking.. It was only fair that I give her obviously under developed brain time to compute the words I ahve used that are more than one syllable.
Insert her cats-bum face here when she says, “Well actually… ” She goes on to tell me that she does have a 5 year old at home and at least she doesn’t bring her kid to the supermarket.. Umm.. Ok. She is parked in a Pram spot with no kid.. and I am the bad mum for taking my baby to the supermarket, so terribly taboo obviously since they discourage it by giving me, and my kind, our own parking spots? Right. Glad I got that straight. I didn’t realize all these years that the key to these and disabled parking spots was just that if you had ever seen a person in a wheel chair, then well, by all means park in our spots for the rest of your life.
The woman yells some things in my direction as I walk away. I care.. I can read. She asked me if I had something to say to come back and say it, then called me a name.. Ahh the irony as I turned back as an experiment and she quickly got in her car. So brave.
My message here is this, if you are one of these knobs that parks in specified parking because you are just simply too lazy to drive around, keep going around till you get a regular one. The universe will look more kindly upon you. Is it really worth it to be that selfish?
