What Are They Thinking?

Generated by A.I.

What's wrong with people?

As I did with my eldest, I am now taking my youngest to confirmation classes that occur once a week during the school year. It doesn't start until 6:00 in the evening and lasts until 7:15 so there isn't a lot of light this time of year. It is about a 20 minute round trip each time I go downtown to the church and during the time of year especially, is over streets that are rough and full of potholes. Most people just rattle down them anyway, drop off their child, go home for the next 45 minutes or so and then repeat the journey. Since I would likely be doing the same thing at home as I do in my own car, I just dress accordingly and sit in my car reading using my backlit kindle paperwhite and save the fuel and wear on my vehicle. I have found that it is quite tolerable to read for 75 minutes without my car on for most days where the temperature is above zero degrees F. On the rare evening it is below those temperatures, I have been known to start my car back up and heat things again before turning it off until time to head home.

Normally there is just myself and one other person in a vehicle who doesn't think driving home is worth it however, the other person definitely doesn't believe in shutting off their vehicle. Even in the early fall when it temperatures are a perfect 72 degrees, they still sit in their vehicle with their windows rolled up and engine running the entire 75 minutes. It is a colossal waste of resources and their money but to each their own. However, they also leave their headlights on that entire time and always park right behind me in the street side parallel parking spots, for 75 minutes! Fortunately, they tend to park quite close to my vehicle and due to differences in the bodylines, their lights are only visible as a bright glow that I could almost read a normal book by if I had too.

However...

Last week there was a third car that decided to wait out the 75 minutes of class but they picked a spot that was a lot more annoying. The parking lot to the church where the classes take place is about three feet or so above street elevation. Most people choose to back into the spots on the perimeter which is about 8 feet away from the side of my car in the streetside parking. They do this because pickup time is quite congested and backing out of a space in a parking lot full of cars can be challenging. But the newcomer was there well before the parking lot was full or even had cars parked. Everyone was mostly dropping off their kids at the door and then proceeding out to go home again. So the newcomer had their choice of spots and chose to pull into the parking space halfway down the lot that was directly in front of my passenger's side front door window. It meant that I was looking directly at both beams of their headlights from eight feet away. Of course, they too sat in their car the entire time with it idling and their headlights on.

I was pretty peeved at the situation and thought about getting out of my vehicle, walking to the parking lot entrance and back to the newcomers car and asking them to turn off their headlights or perhaps bash them in with a tire iron, whichever felt more convenient. But I bit my tongue, held myself at bay and arranged the passenger side visor to block most of the light. Perhaps the reason they joined the other idler and myself that night was because their child needed to leave about 10 minutes early. When the child got into the car, they mercifully backed out of their space but by then there were at least another dozen cars already there idling and headlights on. As the newcomer's car headed toward the exit, some 20 feet from the front of my car with not an obstacle in-between, I thought briefly about turning my car on and putting on my bright lights to give them a dose of their own medicine but again, I managed to contain myself. I was sitting in front of a church parking lot after all and am taught to turn the other cheek.

But what are they thinking?