The "FIVE DOLLARS!" Game

Does anyone remember my coffee shop days, when I first started blogging? I would meet a gaggle of  friends on weekends, and sit at the outdoor tables. We'd talk, and blog, and check out icanhazcheezburger on someone's laptop. Once my friend Momo and I tried to teach ourselves how to knit, and failed miserably. We drank gallons of wine (collectively, not all in one night), watched cars and people, and would most often end up helping our favorite baristas chain up the chairs at the end of the night.

We created nicknames for people we hadn't met yet, bought a sandwich or two for a few local characters, and created stupid games amongst ourselves.

One of the stupid games we played was at the expense of poor parallel parkers. The first of us at our table to spot someone struggling to park their vehicle would scream FIVE DOLLARS! Making the first call entitled you to five dollars if the driver hit the car in front of or behind them. Only, no one ever got the five dollars, because there was no five dollars on the table. It was an imaginary five dollars.

But it was the game.

Clint and I were recently having dinner at the bar across the street from that coffee shop, and turned around to watch someone in an SUV making an attempt to get one of the front parking spots. The driver—I will not reveal her gender for fear of your discriminating against us—had about 4 feet in front of her, but to our amazement, BAM BAM BAM BAM...just kept backing up and hitting the car behind her.

Oh, it was a nightmare! Still, I could not stop screaming "FIVE DOLLARS! FIVE MORE DOLLARS! FIVE DOLLARS!" It was terrible, and I kept laughing gleefully every time she rammed into that car. As if I were at a demolition derby, for heck sake. Clint, and others around us were amused—I mean, it was a quite a spectacle—but not nearly as giddy as I was over the whole thing.

Oh, how I miss my coffee shop, some days.

Welp, that's the whole story, and the moral of it is: If you're telling yourself that all of the people along the sidewalk aren't paying attention to the way you park, and so you shouldn't be nervous...well, yes they are, and they are winning imaginary money off of you.

Do as I do, and go find a parking garage.



Sidenote: Clint and I did cross the street when we left; there was no damage to the car that had been repeatedly bumped in this story.