Do you ever notice how much people are obsessed with patterns and consistency? I had my own little experience of this today. I turned on the car at 7:20 to get to school, scraped/brushed for three minutes, popped in The Craig Machine, and got moving. I arrive at school a little before 7:30 and move down to my parking place.

My parking spot is the first spot next to an island about three-fourths of the way across the lot. Angel parks her giant, gray, twenty-year-old monster next to mine. Matt's black Dodge pick-up is next. Then there's the light pole, followed my Emily's little white car. (My car is a red Dodge Neon, seeing as I got to describe everyone else's.) Great, right? We always park that way; it's understood. It makes sense too. My car is probably the smallest, so it's easiest for me to maneuver around the curb and angle things right, for example.

But yesterday, there was a problem. A purple sporty-looking Audi was parked in my spot. School doesn't start until 8:05, so by getting there at 7:30, I tend to be earlier than most people. (I'm not a fanatic; I have to turn on machines and cameras and stuff for the school's TV program that runs every morning before school... That's what I get for living so close to school and having my own means of winter transportation.)

So, that means it's probably a teacher. They aren't even supposed to park here, though. This is the second-rate parking lot that is far away from the school entrance. They have their own parking lot with a shorter walk. This was ridiculous. Now, the major problem is that there's also a cruddy looking green hatchback parked in the spot opposite mine, so my only options are to go find another spot (and risk getting verbally assaulted by a very scarey person), park in Angel's spot, park in Matt's spot, etc., or block one of their spots (which is just as useless... it's a one-way lot, so people get cranky if they have to go around). I ended up parking in somebody's spot that I knew would be absent.

But then the problem returned. I went through my same ritual this morning, and right around "Whittlin' Man," I arrived at the parking lot once more only to find the same two cars in the exact same two spots. One of them had obviously been driven, but the other was completely frosted over. This was very annoying, and I couldn’t park in a temporary spot this time. In a moment of decision, I parked in Angel's spot. She parked in Matt's, and so on until somebody was out of a spot.

And that's the horrible thing. One person parking in the wrong spot ruined the entire system. Everyone has his or her unwritten claim to a certain parking place, and now somebody has gone and messed it all up. The hilarious thing is that we are so attached to each spot that we sit there, not moving for two minutes trying to figure out what to do. We're lost when our system is altered.