Parking Wars

This is not a rant on women drivers, or mommy drivers, or Phoenix drivers.  Really it's not a rant on drivers.  This is a rant on parkers.  Occasionally I drop Audrey off at her preschool before heading to work.  Her school shares a fairly tight parking lot with, among all things for terrible morning traffic, a Starbucks.  Her school also attracts families from some rather wealthy communities in north Phoenix and Scottsdale.  There are plenty of Lexuses (Lexi?), Mercedes SUVs, and Range Rovers to accompany the fleet of minivans and other I-don't-need-a-look-at-me-car-I-just-need-something-to-get-the-kids-around vehicles.

Can you smell the aroma of parking snafu mixing with the steamy fragrance of a freshly brewed Frappuccino?

Mommies, or to be fair anybody dropping off the tykes, are in a hurry to dump off and dash off to a few precious hours of child-free freedom.  The kind of freedom that isn't free.  It's about $5.50 an hour.  So the mommies, or again in fairness the "persons," dropping off the children, don't bother to take up merely one parking spot.  Said persons park the kidmobile squarely centered on the white parking stall dividing line, as if they were lining up a 747 for takeoff on the runway at JFK.

Three persons mommies, three kids, six parking spots.  And as if the vehicles weren't already drawing enough attention, they all happened to be high end Euro-rides.  "Look at me.  My ego and my car cannot possibly fit into just one parking spot.  Please do not park your sub-$70k vehicle within ten feet or I could be at risk of catching your middle-class-ness."  Oh, the humanity.