Panic at the disco? No, confusion at the parking meter.

One of my favorite activities recently has been watching people outside my office window trying to operate the centralized parking meter. No one – and I am not exaggerating – can figure out how to use it on the first try. It usually goes down like this:

After carefully studying the parking restriction sign (“No parking between 7:00 and 10:00am, Monday thru Friday, or after 4:30pm on weekdays or Saturdays and/or cloudy Sundays, or on the third Tuesday morning following the summer Olympic games, unless parked no more or less than 5 feet from the curb”) and consulting their watches about 14 times, the person - usually a tourist or someone from the suburbs who’s already a nervous wreck because they have to drive in city traffic - will decide that they can park on the street. Depending on whether or not there’s parallel parking involved, this whole process can take up to 7 hours.

Then the person will exit their car. It’s funny because at this point they think they have conquered the worst part by having found a parking spot in Georgetown, but they have no idea what they are in for next. They approach the centralized meter and begin reading the 14 paragraph instruction guide on the front of the meter. But what they will soon realize is that the instructions might as well be written in hieroglyphics - there is NO understanding them. Inevitably the person will give up on the instructions, remove wads of cash from their wallets and start trying to insert it in various openings on the meter, none of which are correct. If you get to paragraph 10, preamble 6, verses 2 to 70 of the instruction guide, you’ll know that you can also pay the meter with your credit card, but no one gets that far.

After unsuccessfully trying to jam money in every crevice of the meter, the next action is always the same: with mouth slightly agape and brow furrowed, the person steps back from the meter and looks around. They look from left to right, up and down, as though perhaps the parking meter fairy might step out of shadows and come to their rescue. Or maybe they think the candid camera crew will pop out and reveal that the person is not retarded, but rather the meter is impossible to use and the whole transaction has been caught on tape. Either way, they start looking around, but it doesn't help. I once saw a woman flag down a police officer and ask him to help her use the meter. I couldn’t tell what she was saying to him, but I understood the body language of the police officer. He kept shaking his head, averting his eyes, and stepping backwards ever so slowly, as if to say “Lady, I am a PO-LEECE OFF-CER, not a parking attendant! Figure it out your damn self.”

Another time I witnessed a very advantageous homeless man teaching himself the ways of the parking meter, and when the next confused parker arrived, he stepped in to offer his knowledge at the low, low price of just $5. The only problem was that he was homeless, and people in Georgetown don’t take too kindly to homeless people trying to teach them things.

Eventually, through Divine Intervention or with the assistance of a Harvard-educated neurosurgeon, the person figures out how to pay the meter and they stomp off to wherever they’re going. But as long as this process continues, I am going to take advantage of it and continue blogging about how the Georgetown parking meter reduces even the most confident, well-educated individual into a befuddled imbecile on the verge of tears.