{"id":6388,"date":"2015-03-13T15:15:10","date_gmt":"2015-03-13T19:15:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/arts.umich.edu\/ink\/?p=6388"},"modified":"2015-03-13T15:18:21","modified_gmt":"2015-03-13T19:18:21","slug":"if-parking-garage-walls-could-talk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/2015\/03\/13\/if-parking-garage-walls-could-talk\/","title":{"rendered":"If Parking Garage Walls Could Talk"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.<\/p>\n

I got lost in a parking structure. Now wait<\/i>, 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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<\/i> 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<\/i> a torn up piece of paper with a coded message, so I think they fell short.)<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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<\/i> 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.<\/p>\n

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<\/i> 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.<\/p>\n

I have to give credit where credit is due, so here<\/a> and here<\/a> are tv show quotes that I referenced, because both of these guys are funnier than me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2176,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6388"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2176"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6388"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6388\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6393,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6388\/revisions\/6393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}