Dude, Where's My Car?

No parking lot in Olney is large enough to misplace your car. You have to hike across the TJ Maxx/Shoppers lot if you try to combine clothes and grocery shopping, but you'll never really lose sight of your vehicle. You can always spot your car in front of the CVS shopping center even though navigating through that lot resembles a game of Frogger. People who snag an open space in the post office's postage-stamp-sized parking lot can't lose their car if they tried. On the other hand, if you have trouble spotting your car in the underutilized (and thus seemingly vast) parking lots at Safeway or Roots, then you must have forgotten what your car even looks like.

However, even when you do remember what your car looks, you might not be able to find it once you leave Olney. Yesterday I took my kids to DC and parked at Union Station. After a few hours of traipsing from one museum to another, we straggled back to the garage and entered "The Parking Lot" Seinfeld episode. Despite reciting "Level 1, Stairs 2," I could not for the life of me locate our car (which, in case you haven't already figured out, was on the first level by the second stairwell). Just as Kramer hauled around his new air conditioner, I carried one of my exhausted elementary-school-age offspring. My older child needed to go to the bathroom like Jerry and George did, but I didn't want an officer to catch anyone urinating in a dark corner (as Jerry and George were). Finally, like Elaine in dire need of getting her pair of goldfish home before they die, I had a pair of kids about to fall asleep ... and I would have died if I had to carry both of them back to our still-invisible car.

After about 20 minutes (shorter than a Seinfeld episode!), I located our car and (luckier than the Seinfeld characters) successfully started the car. Fifteen dollars later, I escaped from the garage and was on my way back to Olney... where the parking is free.