The Menace that is...Parking Meters

So last summer I parked my (then working) car in downtown Berkeley. Most likely I was on my way to Top Dog in Berkeley to enjoy delicious all-American foodstuff while surrounded by rabid anti-government Libertarian propaganda. Only in fucking Berkeley do you have to suffer the slings and arrows of radical political debate while you get a hot dog. (Think I am exaggerating? Lets take a look at their website .) On the plus side the dogs are good. Downtown Berkeley is not overly blessed with parking spots. Most are controlled by the newfangled parking machines you stick your credit card into and in return they give you a piece of paper to put on your dash. The only spot I found was along a strip of the old school parking meters. Small problem. I only got twenties. I see the Starbucks half a block away and I take off at dead sprint for said coffee shop. And by dead sprint I mean awkward zombie shuffle. I break a bill and I head back at the same determined zombie pace. As I get closer I am laser focused on the meter by my car, trying to get there before the hyper-vigilant Berkeley ticket-matons drop one more flag beneath my wiper.

For a liberal town the City of Berkeley seems to zero in on hiring OCD cursed ticket givers with a glaze of fascism. I would pay good money (if I had any) to see a debate between them and the owners of Top Dog. Anyway I am focused on the hypnotic blinking red of the expired meter. A little something about me. I have big feet. Huge feet. Size 15. You cannot picture how big that really is. There are families in Asia that reside in houses that take less material to make then my shoes. Also allow me to amend an earlier description. When I said my sprint resembled an awkward zombie shuffle I should have included the caveat that it is really like an awkward zombie who very rarely lifts his gigantic feet very far from the ground. So I am shambling at the meter like it is made from BRAINS! I am even leaning forward a little, over my shoe tops, like a sprinter coming into the finishing ribbon. At this moment one of my colossus feet impacts with the edge of a broken sidewalk beneath me. Slow motion time begins. I have heard this also happens to athletes when they enter "The Zone". This also happens to me when I approach "Enoz Eht", or whatever you would like to call the photo negative of "The Zone".

I pitch forward, amazingly reaching terminal velocity within the space of four feet. Ever notice when you are driving if you stare at one thing too long you will start to drift in that direction? Well I am headed directly at the apple of my eye, the parking meter. It plows brutally into my chest. I make the OOOF sound one makes when you are punched in the chest. My head snaps forward like a crash dummy in a highway safety video, and my arms follow, snapping forward as I impact the very well dug in parking meter. The quarters I have clutched in my sweaty palm flee my grasp, as if my fingers are not strong enough to resist the forward momentum of the coins. They scatter before me, one bouncing off my hood and rolling down the street. I hope the homeless guy who only utters guttural noises down on the corner (who I pointedly ignored like the white man I am) picks it up. At this point I am near parallel to the ground, and I begin a face first belly flop onto the concrete. My right arm bravely tries to stave off the inevitable. It wraps around the meter and clings for dear life. My head snaps forward again as its travel toward the ground is brought up short.

My right shoulder (yeah, the bad one) screams in protest of this act perpetrated by the ambitious right arm. I can feel the thought process of my previously frayed and never repaired rotator cuff. (thats the thing that hold the big ball on the top of your arm bone inside the shoulder) It considers if this is the point in my life when its failure would do me the most harm. Failure in this case meaning my right arm tearing away from my body and staying entwined with meter as the rest of me plunges to warm concrete. I await its decision with baited breath. Or I would if all the air had not just been knocked from my lungs by a symbol of municipal authority. It decides to hold out and hope that one day I am hanging off a cliff over a waiting thresher below. (I have no idea what a thresher does, but it sounds like something you would not like at the bottom of the cliff you are hanging from)

So I hang on desperately, gasping for air and hanging off of this meter. No more than half a second has passed since my toe encountered concrete. I pop to my feet immediately, looking around to see if anyone has witnessed my death plunge. Sure I was hurting, but I grew up Catholic. Pain is fleeting. Embarassment is forever. Dusting myself off and trying to retrieve my quarters, I feed the newfound bane of my existence. (Up until my car stopped working I would flip off that meter every time I drove by.) For the next day and a half I search youtube for the key words "goofy" "bastard" "tackles" "parking meter" in a cold sweat on the hour every hour. I can only imagine from a dispassionate viewpoint my actions resemble the single minded attack of a broderline pyschotic on an innocent piece of city property.

I have an idea Berkeley. How about you use some of the revenue you bleed from me through parking tickets to....fix....the...fucking...sidewalk?