Parking Disaster

As far as spring-like days go, today was probably the closest we've come to having one this year in Toronto, so naturally I spent it following my girlfriend around on College Street as she shopped for shoes and clothes and cosmetics and a birthday present for her mom... Anyway, I was sitting on the steps of this shoe store, wanting to kill myself, when all of a sudden I see this lady pull off the most disasterous 30 seconds of driving I've ever had the pleasure of witnessing in my life.

We were at the corner of College and Beatrice and this lady was driving some silver little Honda. The space she was trying to parallel park in could have easily fit a Greyhound bus, but she still somehow managed to mangle everything in her path. She began by hitting the side of the car parked in front of her. I have no idea how she pulled this off because it wasn't like she just clipped the back end of the car; she actually hit this thing at the driver's side door. Not letting a minor detail like denting another vehicle deter her, she proceeded to back into the car behind her not once, but twice. It was as if she didn't take enough paint off the first time, so she decided to drill it even harder just for good measure the second.

By this point I was laughing hysterically, but this lady was clearly losing it. Instead of stopping where she was, she jerked the car forward, right into the middle of the streetcar tracks, and jumped out of her car, denying that she'd hit anything despite the fact that both cars were covered in silver paint and both owners of the cars she'd mangled were standing there in stunned disbelief, having watched the entire debacle unfold. It wasn't until one of the guys she'd hit asked for her insurance papers that she realized she'd locked her keys in the car... in the middle of the streetcar tracks!

Forty-five minutes later, with the streetcars backed up eight-deep and the traffic stopped for two miles in both directions, they finally managed to move this lady's car. If I'd had a camera, this could have easily been the YouTube clip of the year.

Obviously, this little episode was the hightlight of my day.