The Parking Garage Incident

Maria V. Gallagher learned some valuable lessons while stuck in a parking garage.

My father had a favorite saying which he would repeat to my sister and me time and time again:

“The hurrier I go, the behinder I get.”

This homespun humor meant that, the more we would rush around, the less we would accomplish.

My mother was a little more direct. When I swung by her house one time, on my way to yet another engagement, she looked at me with all her sternness and said, “Slow down!”

Unfortunately, another birthday had to pass before I would take those words to heart.

The day after my birthday this year, I was downtown on a work assignment. I had completed my meeting and was hoping to rush back to my office. I walked from the Capitol to the parking garage, slipped my parking garage ticket into the slot in the pay machine, slid my credit card in, picked up a receipt, and rushed over to my car on the parking garage’s ninth floor.

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I like to put my parking garage ticket into my billfold so it is safe and secure. But when I got to my car, jumped into the driver’s seat, and opened up my bag, the ticket was nowhere to be found. Keep in mind this is one of those parking garages where you need a ticket in order to exit. I panicked. I started throwing things out of my purse, thinking that it had slipped to the bottom of the bag. No such luck.

No problem, I smugly thought. I will just drive down to the gate, press the call button, and explain what happened. The woman who answered my call calmly explained that I needed a ticket to leave the premises. "But I have a receipt!" I confidently replied.

The problem was, it was the wrong receipt. A previous driver had left the receipt behind in the machine, and I had not waited to retrieve my receipt.

A guardian angel in the form of a parking attendant then appeared. She went back to the pay machine and, sure enough, both my receipt and the parking garage ticket were there. Finally, success! Or so I thought …

We slipped the ticket into the machine by the exit. Too much time had elapsed. I had to get a new ticket and pay an additional fee before they would let me out.

The hurrier I went, the behinder (and poorer) I got.

Click to tweet:
The hurrier I went, the behinder (and poorer) I got. #CatholicMom

Still, while stuck in the parking garage, I learned some valuable lessons:

Slow down! Rushing is seldom a good idea. All good things happen in God’s time.
Guardian angels sometimes appear in the guise of parking attendants.
There is no substitute for some things in life. That includes parking garage tickets.
God sometimes gives us opportunities to laugh, and we should take full advantage of them.

Here’s hoping your next trip to a parking garage goes more smoothly than mine!

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