The other day I went to the new Jewish Community Center in my town. It's absolutely fabulous. I've been using the JCC's eventual opening as an excuse to put off exercising regularly. But now my excuse (or at least that particular excuse) has expired. The place is open. I worked up a good healthy sweat. It's got all the latest equipment, fancy shmancy digital lockers, wonderful showers, and a sweet lap pool. The staff is enthusiastic.
I'm sure there are many top notch facilities like this around the area. But I also know that immediately upon entry with my car, I could tell you that this was the JCC, not some Y or non-denominational workout facility. You can tell just by being in the parking lot. It's like every other JCC I've been to. Jews can't park. They just can't.
It's funny. I drove up to the place. Some old guy was ahead of me trying to cram his big car into a space made tiny by the fact that the cars on both sides ignored the lines. I waited. He gave up, backed up and then drove off to do his own butcher parking job.
It's like Tay Sachs, this no parking gene. It must run in Ashkenazi Jews due to too much inbreeding. I know it runs in my family. Often my mother wouldn't even try to park. She'd get out of the car in a parking lot, smile at the first man who looked like he wasn't an axe murderer and hand him the keys. My father used his car as a battering ram when he parked.
The odds of me inheriting this no parking gene were undoubtedly quite high. But somehow I avoided it. I'm a lucky fellow I know.
Not so for many others, though. The no parking gene is always in abundance at JCC and synagogue parking lots. I don't think what's going on is a willful ignoring of the parking stripes. No, no, it's not arrogance. It's incompetence, a basic lack of hand/eye coordination that involves the use of a motor vehicle. I'm sure it's related to the no sports gene. There are exceptions of course. Sandy Koufax is undoubtedly one hell of a parallel parker.
It probably goes back for a thousand years, this parking gene defect. I can just imagine a JCC from the year 1400, all those horse-driven wagons parked willy nilly on the dirt lot in front. Back then you lifted rocks and pedaled a millstone round and round. Or something like that. That was back in the days of the Flintsteins (yes, go ahead and groan).
Calvin Trillin, a nice Jewish boy obsessed with parking in New York City who claims to have written the first (and only) "parking novel," Tepper Isn't Going Out, may have already touched on this issue. I haven't read the novel nor do I intend to. But if Calvin Trillin didn't already include information about this no parking gene in his first novel, he has some great material for a sequel.
Wednesday, September 02, 2009
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2 comments:
Being a Gentile from a very Gentile suburb of L.A., I haven't spent enough time in Jewish neighborhoods to notice the high frequency of bad parking. Living in Durham, NC for the past four years, however, I've noticed another such phenomenon: a high frequency of moseying, defined as drifting along at 10 or 15 miles an hour below the speed limit while treating lane boundaries, including center lines, as matters of indifference. A wag might suggest that inbreeding plays a role here too.
"Tepper isn't going out" is a droll hoot. It's a biting satire of the Giuliani administration in New York City.
There are some transplants that take root in Durham. If you come from the East for instance, somehow all that greenery mixed with warm weather in the winter and low taxes and housing costs year round translates into heaven. Plus you get to keep your snobbishness and Eastern obsessions with status.
But the California to Durham transplant usually fails. The weather isn't as good. Green in summer looks strange. The moseying you note in driving applies to thinking as well; you start to worry that maybe this slow brain phenomenon might be contagious. The bugs drive you crazy. All that Eastern-based snobbishness and obsession with status is annoying. The North Carolina Symphony gives you permanent ear damage (OK, I can be snobby, too).
I give you three more years before there is a "For Sale" sign in front of your house. I'll happily recommend a good realtor if you need one.
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