If you drive to and from school, you surely know the grief of realizing you’ve arrived at your car too late and you’ll be waiting for the next 15 minutes to leave the parking lot. Many times I’ve heard that classic jingle of people preparing their keys a minute or two before the bell rings, and the squeak of rubber soles against the stairs as people run to their vehicles. I would know, because I’m one of those people. 

It’s not that I despise education, but rather because being late to your car has consequences. If you’re late, you’ll have to wait. On days when I wear heels, which is more frequent than my knees would prefer, I don’t clop quite fast enough to get to my car in time to beat the stadium style lines. 

Unfortunately, this just scratches the surface at the occasional disaster that the parking lot becomes. 

Each year, juniors and seniors must buy parking passes from the school in order to park in the student parking lot. This year, like many others, I paid $10 to park at school. Well realistically, I paid for nothing. Tons of sophomores who cannot purchase passes are parking here. My pass (which I refuse to stick to my windshield) flew off my dashboard and I didn’t realize it for a week. Neither did the school. Allegedly, they’ve begun to check passes, but even so, the precedent has already been set. 

It’s not as if I’m a model car owner here at school, I’ve backed up into a large parking garage post for crying out loud, but at least I can get in the school parking lot lines. Some of y’all….not so much. 

The parking atrocities that are committed daily here have begun to be documented through the Instagram account swparkingfails, and let me tell you, it’s bad. So far they’ve mostly documented students (other than one teacher who will remain unnamed to maintain their honor), but the adults are worse. 

Oftentimes, there is a car parked in the bike lane on N 175th and a couple in the fire lanes. You glance inside and it’s almost always a parent. Each time I see that, I say a little prayer that a biker doesn’t zip down the lane and fly over someone’s car, or that no emergency occurs where fire trucks are necessary. They aren’t just causing a little disruption, they’re causing safety hazards. 

When people aren’t blocking critical space, they try to cut you in line when you’re leaving. Most understand that the two lines that stream into the exit onto Fremont go one car from one line, and one car from the other, back and forth so people leave in a timely manner. Those who love to break these rules tend to be junior boys who think the cars they’ve had lowered one inch from the ground are cool, and parents who feel like their time is more important than others. For those people, all I have to say is that I would rather play IRL bumper car with you than let you cut me in line.