Traffic Snarl

It's a beautiful Friday afternoon. Sun shining, faint breeze. The perfect summer day. Overall, quite fitting for the date on which the annual Fourth of July Parade Slash Party in Fernando's municipality takes place.

Since Fernando's Dominion is located right on a major highway, the parade in question passes directly in front of the store. This allows Fernando to sit in comfortable air conditioning and look out upon the parade while other people deal with the weather.

What is less exciting is the parking situation. The Dominion has immediately before it a small street which runs parallel to the main highway. Customers generally park in a neat fashion while patronizing the store: pulling up parallel to the curb on either side until the distance to the front door grows too far to conveniently walk (about two car lengths, less in the winter), at which point they begin parking perpendicular to the building on the other side, in front of Fernando's large office windows.

On Fourth of July Parade Day, though, all attention to sensible parking goes out the window. The chaos that is the average Wal-Mart parking lot has nothing on Fernando Street. People pull in from either end of the street; some park parallel while others K- or Y-turn themselves into a perpendicular position; others just jam in at any old acute angle. Queerly enough, the spot directly in front of the store where people generally park when the road is full remains free of obstruction.

Of course, pulling in is easy. Cars generally filter in one at a time to their final, desired location and orientation. But when the parade ends and everyone wants out....well, bedlam ensues. The people who parallel parked can't move because the ones who parked perpendicular are backing out but then someone who had already begun driving along the street comes along and the person must pull back in...or rush out in disregard of his own safety, causing that other person to slam on the brakes, thereby stymieing the motorized lurch to freedom of an entirely separate batch of people caught in their own traffic tangle.

An apt microcosm of life.