If Parking Garage Walls Could Talk

If anyone ever, at any point, for any reason…ever, no matter who, or what, or why, for whatever reason whatsoever, needs proof that I am in fact a giant buffoon, I now have the perfect little tidbit for them. I’ve really tipped the scale with this one. Really outdone myself. I can’t even believe it myself, so I can’t fault you if you think I’m making this up, but I assure you that I am not.

I got lost in a parking structure. Now wait, I know what you’re thinking. Stop being dramatic, that’s not even a big deal, people do that all the time. But I’m not talking a wrong turn or getting off on the wrong level while for looking for my car. I’m talking 30 minutes of wandering (give or take 5 minutes, I think time moves differently in parking garages, I really do) trying to find a single door that would take me out of that dark and grime filled concrete box.

It started off innocently enough. I was on the third floor trying to find an exit. I even remembered that I had entered the parking structure from a higher floor and demonstrated enough critical thinking skills to use that information and head back up to where I started. Now listen, I don’t know if the door that I came in from just disappeared or what, but I swear I could not find an exit on that floor. Not one. Just a single staircase (which did not have an external door, I checked) and an elevator that led farther down into what was quickly becoming a pit of despair.

At this point, you may be asking yourself why I didn’t just look at a map of the garage, because surely they would have the exit marked on one of those nice little maps with the ‘you are here’ stickers. This parking structure was so above that. Like one of those people that purposely holds back nuggets of personal information to give an air of mystery and allure, this garage left a little bit to the imagination. As if the designers of the parking structure wanted to leave a few nice Easter eggs behind for an interesting user experience. Either that or they played one too many ‘Escape the Room’ games in their free time. (As it is, I did not find a random keypad or a paper clip or a torn up piece of paper with a coded message, so I think they fell short.)

This was the point when the situation started going to my head, if you can imagine. I somehow forgot that this was an underground garage, and thought it would be a good idea to go to level 1, because that’s where the exit always is. I would feel embarrassed by this, but at this point I’m pretty much maxed out. I realized the faulty logic before I made it all the way to the bottom floor, but at that point I was committed. This was also the point at which I decided to text my roommate and tell her that I am an idiot (she loves to hear about the stupid things I do, and if you can’t tell, this wasn’t an isolated incident), and when I realized that I had no service, so I couldn’t send out an SOS if I tried.

Parking structures always have emergency telephones, but if you think I was going to swallow my pride and call someone to come get me out, you’d be wrong. If you think I was going to call a parking attendant and ask them to please kindly guide me to the outside world, you’d be dead wrong. I saw approximately two other people through my entire quest for sunlight, but if you think I was going to go up to them and ask them what floor the exit was on…I’m pretty sure you get the gist by now.

I’m not sure if there is a happy ending to this story, because we’ve both learned a few interesting things about myself while on this journey, but I can tell you that we can satisfice to know I did make my way out. I went back up to the third floor and walked to the other side of the garage, where I found a door to a random building (a completely separate, nonrelated building. Go figure.) Luckily that building was pretty straightforward. I found a staircase, went up one floor, and found myself facing exit doors and the light of day. Here Comes the Sun played softly in the background as I walked out into the fresh air. This part may or may not have happened, but you can’t prove it didn’t. For all you know, I may never have made it out of that cold concrete death trap. I could just be a ghost typing this up, but that’s another story for another day.

I have to give credit where credit is due, so here and here are tv show quotes that I referenced, because both of these guys are funnier than me.