Classic Cami

I decide to put up 2 posts. It is going to be a very busy weekend and I’ll be lucky if I have time to pee, so here ya go.

The other day, I heard a song on the radio that brought back a memory and put a smile on my face. Are y’all familiar with Daniel Powter’s “Bad Day” song? If you aren’t, you’re probably gonna wanna YouTube it or pull up Pandora and listen before you continue reading. It’ll make this little antidote more meaningful.

When I first started working downtown, it was about the end of May 2007. I had just moved to a different department in the bank, right after I got married. It was fun and exciting to be in the city. This was shortly before the City Creek construction started. ZCMI was still in place, as well as the parking garage. My first few days of work, I wasn’t sure what to expect or where to park. So I paid to park at the ZCMI mall / parking garage that was right on South Temple, next to my office building. It’s kind of funny to think back on those days, everything is so different now.

One day when I was leaving work, I got in my little silver Honda Civic and was heading down from the top of the parking structure. I don’t remember the time of day but it was warm and sunny out, blue skies and clouds. It was a nice day. “Bad Day” was playing on the radio and I was singing along, feeling pretty happy. As I got towards the bottom of the parking garage, I started heading down a long, dark “tunnel” (I suppose you could call it that), where there were parking booth’s and gates at the bottom. There were no cars or lights in that direction, nothing to indicate it was an active exit. I had seen a sign at the top of the tunnel that said “card only” but thought it meant credit card. Yeah. I was wrong. There were no attendants in the booths. This was only for people that had a regular parking pass. DOH! What am I going to do? WHAT am I going to do?!? What am I going TO DO?!?!?! What could I do but put my car in reverse and start backing up. Well it was still early in the afternoon and there weren’t too many people leaving yet, thank goodness. I was almost home free. Except I wasn’t home free. Suddenly there was a car behind me. NO! Are you kidding me?! I don’t know how many of you remember what those old parking garages were like, but there weren’t a lot of lights and those tunnels were very narrow. So I poke my head out of the window and yell for the person behind me to back up, all while flailing my arms to show a backwards motion. This is just soooo typical of me. I’m always doing stupid, ditzy things like this. I mean, honestly, how dumb do you have to be to not just pay attention to your surroundings and avoid this?

In the end, things worked out just fine. It wasn’t really that big of a deal and it was pretty funny. I was laughing at myself on the drive home. I thought “How appropriate that this song is playing on the radio at the exact moment that I do something so monumentally stupid.” As I think back on this story, I realize that I do things like this all the time. Don’t get me wrong, I think I’m a pretty smart girl and I can hold my own. But there’s that other part of me that just does the dumbest things. Whether it's because I’m trying to hurry or I’m just not paying attention, when I think back i see similarities in these experiences. Sometimes I'm able to blow it off and other times I get so angry with myself and fester and fester until I'm even more angry. Every time I do something like this I think to myself, you need to slow down and pay attention! Stop getting yourself into these kinds of situations! And here we are again…. I have dozens of stories like this; maybe I’ll share another someday. The point of the story, well I dunno other than I hope it was a good laugh and I guess try to see the silver lining in all situations.

Today’s emergency is tomorrow’s afterthought.