There is something about having a car follow closely behind me at the speed of about one mile per hour that makes me very uncomfortable.
Yet, almost every day this semester, including today as I walked out to my car after a morning of long classes, a car comes creeping up behind me, eyeing me, driving incredibly slow and signaling into my spot before I can even dig my keys out of the bottomless pit of my purse.
Don’t get me wrong – I do understand the difficult feat of finding a decent parking spot on this campus, especially around 11 a.m.
The task of finding a spot at all seems near impossible when running a few minutes late.
Yet I can’t help but to wonder if it wouldn’t be faster for the person to stake out an already vacant parking spot and just walk the few extra yards for the time it takes them to wait on the person walking, not even knowing if the poor student they are so closely driving along side of has a decent spot at all.
After all, if the student who is being followed is as forgetful as I am, odds are it may take them a while to figure out where they parked in the first place.
Now I am also the first to admit that I am a wimp when it comes to cold weather and will go to great lengths to make any walking distance shorter when it’s 20 degrees outside. On days like today, however, when the sun is out and short sleeves are welcome I don’t understand why I am still being followed for my mediocre parking space.
Today when I was in my car trying to find a space, I got stuck behind somebody following a student to his car at a painstakingly slow pace when there were three vacant spots three spaces away from his.
Maybe this happens because we as students assume that the possibility of there being another spot nearby is highly unlikely.
Maybe once we set our sights on something that we think is so right we overlook all other possibilities. Maybe the drivers are just used to staking out spots because of the recent awful weather.
Either way, I don’t think we should take our free exercise, a.k.a. the long daily treks across campus, for granted. With spring weather, hopefully we can now stop wasting time making our colleagues nervous by following beside them when driving, and instead enjoy the breeze against our faces and wind in our hair.
We can look at the walks as an enjoyable experience and embrace the endorphins it has to offer us.
Maybe the people that follow students for their parking spaces think it saves them time. Maybe I’m reading too much into this and the drivers have just come to enjoy following students to their spots to freak them out a little.
Either way, since it is so warm outside, next time I am being followed I may decide to start enjoying the weather and go for a nice aimless walk around the parking lot.

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