I Thought Costco Sold Food. I Was Wrong.
You can buy anything but food
‘This is the best time to come,’ says my husband as we drive into the car park.
It’s funny what a car park does to a man.
No spaces, and he becomes steely-eyed, predatory, back on the savannah hunting the woolly mammoth; if another man beats him to a space, that man is an asshole, a loser, a jerk. If he beats another man to a space he is of course one of life’s winners.
Lots of spaces and a man is detached, bored, faintly alarmed — is he somewhere no one wants to be? Is this empty car park a metaphor for his empty life?
Then there’s the car park with spaces, but not too many. In this car park he goes all FOMO. There’s a space — but wait — there’s another, better space, nearer to the entrance, nearer to the exit, nearer to the ticket machine, in the shade, in the sun… the choice troubles him, flummoxes him, unsettles him.
And so every row of parked cars we round my husband spies a better space and then another and another. A more beguiling space always beckons. If it were me driving, I would park in the first empty. But not him.
We park near the entrance, as close to the entrance as you can get without an invalid sticker and waves of satisfaction, of triumph, of joy lap from…
