Okay, technically not the highway, but it’s car related asininity anyway.

We were parked in the new parking garage at Seattle Center on Saturday. Went with a group of the usual suspects to see the Jim Henson Muppet exhibit at the Science Fiction Museum as part of Susan’s birthday celebration. Great exhibit by the way, if you’ve not seen it yet you need to get your butt out there pronto because it leaves next week.

Because of work related madness (do NOT ask), Andrew had to work this weekend so we just had time to do the Muppets and couldn’t stay for the rest of the festivities. We leave the SFM, wander back down to level 3 of the parking garage and start getting ourselves and the car together to leave.

SUV, driven by B, pulls past us, several cars past us, and then starts to slowly back up. At the same time a sedan, driven by A, is sitting behind us at a respectful distance with his blinker on indicating that he’d like our parking place when we were done with it.
B continues to back up. We figured that she was backing up to allow someone else further along the row to back out so she could have their parking place, but she backed up, and backed up, and backed up until she was completely blocking us in and until she was almost in A’s engine compartment. And she stayed there.
And stayed there.
And stayed there.
Echoing muttering from B and from A.

I unfastened my seatbelt and turned around to stick my head out the window and ask B, very politely I thought, “Excuse me, are you waiting for this parking place?”
“Yes! But this guy won’t back up!”
“Well we can’t get out until you move and we need to get home. I’d like you to move please.”
“But then he’ll get the parking place!”
At this point the nonsense of the whole situation really lit my fuse.
“I DON’T CARE which one of you gets this parking place, we can’t leave until you move so I need you to move forward NOW!”
“I’m not moving!”
I am not sure what else I was planning to do at that point. After the week I had at work last week I rather suspect I was planning on leaping out of the car and administering dope slaps all around, but as I pulled myself back into the car Andrew said, in a voice that was pitched to carry to half the parking garage “Roll up your window, we’re going to get a cup of coffee!”.
And I rolled up my window, we got out of the car and I turned to B and said “Fine. Now neither of you can have it.”
I believe she answered with something like “Just so long as HE doesn’t get it!” and Andrew fired back with “And we’re not coming back for at least TEN MINUTES!”
We locked the car and stomped away.
As we were leaving Andrew heard A saying “Fine, just take it!” but since we were out of the car already and since I would have had (and I suspect Andrew would have as well) serious issues with rewarding B for her idiotic behavior neither of us would have been inclined to get back in the car and leave at that point. Andrew’s reaction of “okay, if you can’t play nice then neither of you can have the parking place” was absolutely the right response under the circumstances. I was far, FAR to angry at the time to have been able to even think of such a thing.

When we came back a few minutes later both parties had gone and, presumably, had found parking places elsewhere.
What strikes me about this episode:
1. What did B think she was going to accomplish by blocking our egress and blocking the entire lane behind us? We couldn’t move, A couldn’t move any way but backwards, did she think if she stayed there long enough that A would simply give up and back the wrong direction up the aisle so that she could get into our parking place?
2. When both parties were able to find alternate parking places within a matter of minutes, why did EITHER of them think that waving their gonads around (metaphorically of course) would accomplish anything? Of the two I would be more on A’s side, if I were on anyone’s side but ours, because in the grand tradition of parking garage etiquette, the damn parking place WAS his, but when it became obvious that B was going to be an idiot about it, why did he think that it was going to be worth the fight?
3. It’s a sad comment on the state of American society that courtesy has waned so completely. Seattle society especially. I thought my city was above this sort of nonsense.