#LookatGod

If you've been following this blog for some time, 1st thank you and 2nd you know that I once fell asleep in an Uber and if I had a less abrasive personality I could have easily been kidnapped. I don't think I live dangerously on purpose I just lack common sense for the most part and more than make up for it with obscure knowledge of Iran's Pahlavi dynasty which almost never comes in handy.

I recently made another egregious auto error. Since my experiences with Uber are often terrible as you can read here, I decided to drive myself to a going away party downtown. My friend Jean-Luc is moving to Atlanta. Many of you will recognize Jean-Luc since he is frequently featured on this blog and most people from my hometown think I'm dating either him or Brendan.

 Brendan

Jean-Luc

I say let the voters decide. (We obviously dance a lot. We've also been known to marathon.)

Jean-Luc has gotten really into the Raleigh running scene in his time here and I was actually going to get involved too but he's moving so oh well. He did his farewell tour at Runologie in downtown Raleigh after running a mile in jeans. I never really got that part of this whole shindig and I definitely did not participate. He knew not to put me down for cardio.

Since the party was downtown my parking choices were a parking deck, metered spot, or street parking. All of which were unappealing to me. I feel most comfortable when parking at a Walmart, Target, McDonald's or Michaels. Anything beyond that is stressful. So once I got in the general area of Runologie, I found a parking deck and went for it. I even backed into my parking space, what confidence! Here's a little foreshadowing...this is going to go south real quick.

My 1st mistake was choosing a 2-hour parking spot. I don't know. I just picked a spot. I panicked. And I didn't know how long the party would last. We're all old. We have bed times to meet and pets to care for and reality shows that aren't going to watch themselves. So I exited the parking deck and used my phone to navigate the streets. My phone got super confused, I had no idea where I was going, and somewhere along the way I realized that it may be a good idea to remember the location of my parking deck. But I was no longer at my parking deck. So I made a note of Tasty 8's and thought "perfect! I parked by Tasty 8's" without realizing how completely insufficient that information was.

Had I simply walked from my parking deck to Runologie and then back to the deck, I probably could have figured it out. I would have walked down Hargett Street until something looked familiar. But I was really thrown for a loop when we walked from Runologie to a restaurant. At the restaurant I was too busy eating to worry about the fact that I now had no idea as to where my car was. I ordered a side baguette, to be served on the side of my water. I would normally say ice water but we were all served water in liquid form only, not a cube of solid water to be found. It was like Europe without all the...and I have to be really careful what I say here because I'm big in France right now so I'm gonna go with...English tea? Polish sausages? German cars? Croissants are great though. Can never have too many croissants.

Once everyone was leaving I realized that locating my car was going to be much more difficult than walking to Tasty 8's. But what else was I going to do? I got Jean-Luc to point me in the direction of the mediocre hotdog restaurant and embraced the "figure it out as I go" approach that has served me so well in the past. It's dark. I'm walking around downtown Raleigh alone. I can't find my car. I'm looking for landmarks but all turned around because we walked all over Wake county that night. Since when do parties involve so much foot traffic? But don't worry y'all. That's when God intervened. I followed a couple into a parking deck - under normal circumstances that would be weird but considering my situation, it was very weird. How did I think having more witnesses to my stupidity was going to be helpful?

By some miracle, that very parking deck happened to contain my car, smugly staring at me from the 2-hour spot I had reversed into a mere 5 hours earlier. "Hey stranger, remember me?" I literally LOLed at my good fortune and bad real world skills. Very sorry to the couple I followed into a parking deck at night while giggling to myself. There are no words. I'd love to promise that it will never happen again but I think we both know that would be another case of my mouth writing a check that my brain (or lack thereof) just can't cash.