It took awhile, but I’m starting to feel perfectly at peace with stalking Easton Mall shoppers walking to their cars. Creeping out from behind a parking-lot lamp post or a strategically parked SUV, I’ll keep one eye locked on my golden ticket for a parking space, perhaps a mom and her pubescent son toting shopping bags. The other eye will be on the lookout for any predator cars lurking around that may be itching to get their greasy mitts on my space.  

 Hunched low over my steering wheel, I’ll hit my blinker so all other cars know to back off. When these shoppers leave, their spot is mine. I’ll mumble things under my breath at the unsuspecting shoppers: “That’s it, just a little closer now. O.K., it’s that nice Dodge Neon there. Get your keys. Good. Now put your Footlocker bags in the trunk. Gooood. Now go around to the driver’s side and—NO! What are you doing!  Get in your car! Don’t walk away! Come back! Noooooo…”

Eventually, after an hour or so without success, I’ll ditch the stealthy manner altogether for a more forward approach. I roll down my window. “Hey!” I yell at shoppers. “You going to your car? You leaving?” Then I throw on my blinker and follow at their heels, often nudging their shopping bags with my bumper, across the length of the parking lot.    

This is just how it is with Easton Mall parking. You got to be cutthroat. You can’t be afraid to use your horn. You got to slip it into “survival of the fittest” mentality, because trying to land a parking space there is like playing a nightmarish game of musical chairs without chairs and a state-lotto’s chance of winning.

Once, when I dropped my wife off at Easton with orders to wait while I found a parking space, I meant I’d meet up with her in roughly two minutes. A half hour and several “where are you?” text messages later, I and a line of angry drivers were stuck in the third level of a parking garage behind an oversized Escalade with its blinker flashing, giving me welder’s eye. The driver had placed himself in quite a predicament. He’d done good work at stalking his shoppers, but when it came time for them to back out of their parking space, the Escalade, overeager to swoop in for the kill, had mistakenly pulled up too far, leaving them no room to get out.

A lot of reverse lights were happening, and we cars were already piled up against the Escalade’s bumper like Christmastime Wii shoppers inside GameStop. Every time the Escalade tried to move backward an inch, I imagined its monstrous tires rolling right over my hood. So I panicked and kicked it into reverse. The driver behind me did the same, and on and on down the line it went, until a maddening series of honks erupted from cars in the back who couldn’t see the mess we were in.

Finally, after some surprising maneuvering and the discovery of a loophole in science, the shoppers got out. The Escalade, a poor judge in dimensions and spatial matters already, apparently estimated the space it had made us all pay so dearly for was too small for its bulky frame. Instead of taking its prized spot, as we’d all rightly expected, it zipped ahead into the shadows, leaving behind a mob of drivers ready for murder. I, hit with a jolt of claustrophobia and the need to break free from the honking, revving chain of cars I’d been glued to for the past several minutes, wanted nothing more to do with that cursed parking space. I floored it out of there.     

In the end, I think I finally found a parking space on the roof of the parking garage somewhere, near the blinking apex of a radio tower. When I finally found Jess, she was wandering aimlessly with a Planet Smoothie cup in hand. “Where were you?” she asked, more out of dutiful concern than seeking a real answer. I didn’t have to say. She knew: survival of the fittest.

As we walked about the area and fell obediently into our shopper roles, and as we passed a parking lot, I couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching us. Aaah, I was just being paranoid. But on the other hand, maybe, just maybe, we were being stalked.  

Categories: Shopping